Teaching math is teaching literacy

• The value of interdisciplinary teaching of math and literacy helps develop cognitive skills such as predicting, questioning, inferring and practice with writing and reading.  

-I would have students' get in their small groups for math and have each group answer a different math problem. The group would need to work together to find the answer. Each student in the group would need to write out how they got the answer using complete sentences. Each group would then need to share with the class how they found the answer and if the answer makes sense.

From Reading to Math: How Best practices in Literacy Can Make You a Better Math Teacher, Grades k-5 by Maggie Siena 2009 Math Solutions.

This book explains how teaching math is a lot like teaching literacy because in both cases marks on paper carry specific meanings that need to be decoded. Students need to decode words, draw on context, and vocabulary and fluency is the key to success in literacy as well as breaking the written mathematic code. By teaching students to use powerful cognitive tools such as predicting, questioning, inferring, and synthesizing to comprehend the mathematics they are learning, teachers can help their students deepen their mathematical understanding. Teachers should provide print rich environments, daily practice in reading and writing, and integration of literacy activities, workshop models, direct instruction, small group work, guided reading, and independent practice in reading and writing lessons that are relevant, challenging, and engaging to students. Students benefit from recording and by talking with them about how they decide to do it which helps them understand reading materials and mathematics. Reading aloud is a highly successful instructional method that encourages a love of reading and we encourage our students to be curious, tolerant, staying open minded, and to be critical thinkers by having them observe our own thinking processes and by sharing thoughts about their learning. Effective teachers also us appropriate grouping or partnerships, texts that delight a student or push them further, specific strategy instruction and they know their students. Effective teachers should bring all these qualities in teaching math and reading and should be positive role models, reflect, and help students enjoy reading and mathematics. Have student tap into prior knowledge, question, inferring and visualize, summarize, synthesize, and monitor and repair understanding. It's important to teach reading comprehension when teaching math.

CCSS Literacy and Math Tools: An Interim Report on Implementation and Sustainability during the Pilot Year by Rebecca Reumann-Moore, Ph.D., Nancy Lawrence, Ph.D., Felicia Sanders, Ph.D., Kate Shaw, Ph.D., Jolley Bruce Christman, Ph.D. March 4, 2011 Research For Action.

This document discuses the finding of two types of instructional tools designed to support teachers' integration in literacy and math. The five categories discussed are: Literacy and math theories of action, strategy for the development and implementation of literacy and math tools, toll implementation and use, sustainability, and recommendations. The research method used were teacher surveys, interviews with teachers, interviews with principals and district administrators, classroom observations, and professional development observations. In order to teach both literacy and math require teachers to change the way they teach and allow students to present their work to the class, and encourage students to discuss the mathematical problems and processes used. The tools used from LDC and the Shell Centre both helped develop problem solving strategies by following the LDC templates and encouraging students to defend, present, and explain their math answers in writing which helped develop their reading and writing skills.