“It’s really interesting and fun for me to read what they’ve written, because I can see all the questions.
Instead of telling her students what a polygon is, for example, she’ll show them a set of polygons and a set of non-polygons, and ask them, “What do you notice? What differences do you see?” Students spend a few minutes writing down their answers, and then join groups to compare responses. “I like to do low-stakes writing when we’re coming up with definitions,” said Pahigian. In Pahigian’s math class, writing is regularly used as a learning strategy, one that gives her a window into her students’ thinking. “I want them to instead view it as them experimenting with something and doing something that they feel like they’re really good at.” Students often feel intimidated by math, and transforming the activity into a writing exercise eases some of the anxiety of introducing difficult concepts, she said. “I won’t tell the kids right away, ‘Today we’re going to learn about triangle congruence theorems,’” said Pahigian.
Instead, she hands her students a treasure map and asks them to write detailed directions-using landmarks as a guide-to the buried treasure. For Kyle Pahigian, a 10th-grade math teacher at University Park Campus School in Massachusetts, a lesson on congruent triangles doesn’t start with calculators and protractors.
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