Me? Math?

Comprehending Math: Adapting Reading Strategies to Teach Mathematics, K-6 by Authur Hyde. While I am a kindergarten teacher and this book spans K-6, I think it is important for early grade teachers to have a full understanding of where they are going if they want to teach at a "deep" level. Now I have to admit I would never have picked up a Math book to read this summer, but I was intrigued by this book because the Forward was written by Ellin Keene! I thought the book might give me some ways to connect math to the comprehension strategies (asking questions, making connections, visualizing, inferring and predicting, determining importance and synthesizing) that I teach in reading. It did. Dr. Hyde "braids" math and reading together in a way that helped me see how I could help connect problem solving strategies in math and reading. Math is enhanced by a student who can talk about and write about the strategies that he is using. For instance, a math student has a better understanding of a word problem if he knows how to ask questions, if he can activate schema and make connections and can actually see the problem in his mind. If he can explain the strategy that he used and write about several different strategies for solving the problem, then we have made a difference in both math and language arts at the same time. If the student can learn to do that in math, he can use those same skills to enhance reading comprehension and vise versa. This a great book for K-2 teachers who teach all subjects, because it helps them see how they can make connections for students.