Great question! This would certainly be an important consideration when planning the tasks and approaches to engage students in writing about mathematics. While the current work was focused on the types and purposes of writing about mathematics that could be leveraged to develop and uncover students’ understanding, one way I see to support students’ attention to the mathematical content and reasoning would be to engage them in oral discourse prior to asking them to write about their ideas and helping them make connections between oral and written discourse. Future work could/should focus on the implementation strategies and considerations.

Thanks. I’d certainly love to hear more as you learn more. I’ve looked, though not intensely, to see what’s already known about the potential “competition” between attention to mathematical ideas and communication about mathematical ideas (orally or in writing) and have found nothing. It seems likely that something about timing matters—communicating our thinking with others clearly does help clarify our thinking in some cases, and writing our thoughts often lets us organize and clarify them, but these cognitively demanding tasks also take up mental time and space and attention. Do you know of any studies (or even theory) here? Again, thanks!

I agree that this is an important consideration for next steps in this work as teachers implement these types of writing. We have developed and field tested curriculum for k-5 students (Project M^3 for grades 3-5, M^2 for k-2) where, on average, students wrote about every 3-4 days. Anecdotally, this seemed to strike a nice balance and potentially provided students the space and time to solidify their understanding of key mathematical concepts through writing. You might find Cohen et al.‘s 2015 article in School Science and Mathematics discussing characteristics of second grader’s writing (M^2 intervention and comparison group) to be of interest. Both high- and low-performing students in the intervention group outperformed their counterparts in the comparison group with respect to sharing their reasoning as well as using precise mathematical vocabulary. While this study did not directly attend to your question about timing, it may suggest that the frequency of writing is a reasonable guideline.

Ah, thanks. This is, in fact, very helpful. Mostly, in classrooms, I see less focus on discussing reasoning (generally, less student talk) than seems sensible, and very little student writing, but where I’ve seen writing used with any regularity, it has been a daily required activity and not clearly purposed. The work you’ve put up dealt extremely well, I thought, with the purpose and nature of the writing, and now you’ve also clarified at least initial thoughts about timing. Nice!

Thank you! We are hoping that the mathematical writing gets implemented with intention and not for the sake of writing in and of itself. We see writing as a tool that has the potential to further students’ reasoning, much like intentional implementation oral discourse and use of manipulatives, technology, etc. can when used in ways that support a mathematical habit of mind.

All the best to you. This is great.

This is the first step we have taken to more clearly define what “mathematical writing” can entail for all elementary students participating in the regular mathematics curriculum. Attending to specific needs of student groups is an important follow up. We considered this long-term goal when identifying potential task force participants, and we have researchers and practitioners represented in the group representing the field of English language learners as well as special and gifted education. The task force also relied on the CCSS’s 2012 Framework for English Language Proficiency Development Standards Corresponding to the Common Core State Standards and the Next Generation Science Standards that you may already know addresses writing in mathematics.

Some of the supports I would recommend, based on some of our previous work and teaching experience, would be to scaffold the development of students’ mathematical writing. For example, when first engaging students in mathematical writing consider composing a class response with student input or having pairs of students write their ideas on sentence strips to share with the class. Additionally, engaging students in oral discourse related to the task or problem and helping students make connections between the oral and written discourse can be helpful.

Because there has been limited work in mathematical writing, we identified participants for the task force who have experimented in this work across disciplines, in the classroom, or through curriculum and assessment development. We sought to bring together a diverse group of school- and university- based experts to ensure a comprehensive perspective and offer recommendations that would meet the needs of various stakeholder groups and students.