Writing in Math?

Today math is not just doing the problems and getting the answer anymore. The students are required to explain or justify their answer. They have to make sure they are showing all of the appropriate steps in order to receive full credit. Most of them can do the problem, but when they have to explain it confusion arises. I tell my students to pretend as if they are explaining how to do the problem to a person who doesn't know how to do it at all. They have to be as clear and specific as possible. Some problems simply ask the kids to explain a situation that has been provided for them. For example, the eighth grade New York State Assessment from this year had a real life problem. They had a graph of a line steadily increasing that dealt with gallons and minutes. It showed that as the minutes went by the gallons increased. The kids had to write a situation that represented the graph. They could write whatever situation they wanted to, but it had to deal with as minutes increased the gallons increased. Many of the students used filling a car with gas, but some had trouble because the line did not start at zero. So they had to first say that the car had some gas in it before they got to the gas station. However, because they were focused just on the minutes passing by and the gas increasing as they filled the car they only received partial credit. The following website has some good guidelines on writing solutions. Hope it helps!

http://mathforum.org/elempow/writing.html