This collection of resources was compiled for the EDUC 225 at UCSC class final project in the Spring of 2023 by the best math cohort the program has ever seen.

Emily M., Emily S., Nic, Jocelyn, and Max are about to start their careers as middle and high school math teachers and our goal is to have our students become literate in math. To do so, we have developed this resource as a way to help our students develop their mathematical writing skills. As we’ve learned throughout the UCSC MA/C program, engaging students in writing reflectively about the math they are learning and how they understand it aids them in developing a better conceptual understanding of the math in context, academic language development, and being able to find and correct their own mistakes (Seda & Brown, 2021). If you’ve come across our blog and are a math teacher, please feel free to use these prompts whichever way you think your students need.

We will be using this blog as a way to communicate with each other during our first years of teaching. We will occasionally write reflective pieces on how it went with our students and plans on how to make it better. Add a comment to any post that was helpful to you or if you have suggestions. We are happy to learn and grow from this experience.

How to use our slides:

On the right hand side, there is a link to the Journal Prompts. We put our posts and the prompts in a few different categories depending on the topic/use case and if we believe it’s more heavily geared toward middle or high school students. Pick any prompt that suits your classroom’s needs and get them writing. Some of us use these prompts as an exit ticket, some of us use it as an essay prompt generator, we all do different things to get our students to write more in a math class. Feel free to download the slides and use as you wish as long as credit is given.

The four of us on a boat together.

Seda, P. & Brown, K. (2021). Choosing to see: A framework for equity in the math classroom. Dave Burgess Consulting.