mrkienow

Disciplinary literacy in math relates to the why, the when, and the how of mathematics. Students need to understand why  algorithms work, for example.  Why do we borrow when doing subtraction?  Why does cross multiplication work?  Why does long division work?  Developing conceptual understanding of these methods is important because it builds students' problem solving skills, and their abilities to solve problems in areas where an algorithm isn't known. Knowing when  to use a particular method for solving a problem is also important - if students properly apply problem solving techniques to situations where those techniques are critical, they have far more opportunity to experience success than a student who cannot apply conceptual understanding or appropriate algorithms to a problem. Finally, knowing how  to apply the right problem solving technique is necessary to arrive at the correct solution.  Here are three examples of skills related t...