Writing Prompt #3: MP7 & MP8 The Heart of a Mathematician

Circulate the writing prompts for this lesson.  The students have approximately 40 minutes to organize their ideas and work on the response.

NOTE: This prompt would fit well, and I use it, right after a sequences and series unit.

I grade the writing prompts according to our district-created rubric.  Each class is required to give a writing prompt each nine weeks.  After scoring the prompts, we enter them into a school-wide database that allows us to track and target individual writing performance over a student's four year career.  My students write in math class for more than just the four distict writing prompts, but these targeted approaches are a great way to monitor and celebrate growth.

I grade the writing prompts according to our district-created rubric.  Each class is required to give a writing prompt each nine weeks.  After scoring the prompts, we enter them into a school-wide database that allows us to track and target individual writing performance over a student's four year career.  My students write in math class for more than just the four district writing prompts, but these targeted approaches are a great way to monitor and celebrate growth.

Prior to the Common Core, and a resulting shift in my thoughts about mathematics education, I did not count the writing activities as a formal grade in my course.  However, given the importance of the math practice standards and a realization that PARCC and Smarter Balance both hint at elements of writing, I have revised my course grading so that 10% of the students overall grade is written (and/or oral) communication.  Keep in mind that this 10% is made up of much more than just the four district writing prompts. 

If you haven't checked it out already, I encourage you to visit Robert Kaplinsky's blog.  Many of the SWBAT sentence-starters connect directly to math literacy and the Math Practice Standards. Not unlike the previous writing prompt in this unit, I was able to elaborate on an existing idea thanks to this blog.  It definately helped me connect what I wanted to accomplish to already existing Common Core Standards.