Math and Writing Part 6: Classroom Insights

When grading papers, we can see a myriad of things. A lot of times in my experience, things are not as clear. If it were an English paper, you wouldn’t see parts of the paper all over the place. You would not see the intro in the middle, nor the body at the top, and the conclusion somewhere in the margins.

Yet, in math, these sort of things pop up. Despite mathematics being about communication and conveying information, it is not always treated with the same level of organization that a paper would be.

Most of the classes I taught were entry level classes, and there were a lot of students who were afraid of math. When teaching, one of my big focal points is meeting students where they are at and communicating in numerous ways.

Another big focal point is generating a comfortable learning environment and talking about what students will have to do to succeed. One of my tactics to help with both of those things is to talk about concepts first in terms of what they actually are, and then build up to the math.

I also heavily encourage students to give full and complete answers, well written, descriptive. I encourage them to use their words as they dive into things. Writing things out helps them reason through the problem as well as give me more to work with while grading.

At some point, I started doing exam reflections. That helped with feedback for me on how students were doing. I personally responded to each of them and that helped students. I asked them how they felt before the exam and why, and how they felt after the exam and why. I made it mandatory. I also had students do practice sets for points, they had some agency in it, and it allowed them to make their own study guides, note with some direction from myself.