Math 1, Reading 0

At the beginning of a second grade lesson the teacher announced that the daily schedule had been changed. The next lesson was math rather than reading. The children cheered.

I was not surprised. After 30 years of visiting elementary and middle schools, I have seen a pattern: Math and science are often more popular among students than reading and writing. It’s a broad generalization for which I have no data, but much anecdotal evidence.

Why the pattern? Here is my theory: Math and science can satisfy the curiosity of children about the physical world. Reading and its affiliates (writing, grammar, spelling and literature) are tedious and abstract, at least as taught in the testing-crazed culture of modern schooling.

While reading and writing instruction tends to focus on the abstract rules of written language (the sounds of vowels and consonants, the rules of grammar and punctuation), math and science instruction is built on the concrete logical of the physical world. The content of reading and writing instruction involves ideas and events that are often imaginary or unfamiliar. Physical space and objects available to all, regardless of language, culture or region, unify the content of math and science. Butterflies, bugs and blocks are ever present. One bean plus two beans equals three beans, always and everywhere. Math and science provide the intellectual mechanisms for satisfying curiosity. If you want to build a tree house or a dollhouse, it helps to measure accurately. If Mom expects you home for dinner by six, you need to be able to read a clock and estimate how long it takes to walk a mile, or how much longer you could play if you could bike home rather than walk.

Curiosity naturally involves examining, arranging, hypothesizing and testing. The effects of mathematical rules and processes can be visually confirmed. Reading and writing instruction in the fashion of modern teaching, lacks that connection of common experience. Learning the conventions and grammar of standard language defies our native dialects. (Johnny: We was tired. Teacher: No Johnny, we were tired.) Language instruction requires students to trust the teacher is correct and the speech of friends and family is wrong.

While second graders in math instruction use small cubes to learn addition and subtraction, during reading instruction they summarize an unfamiliar story or infer a main idea.  While a second grader can take away one fourth of a pie to leave three fourths of a pie, they cannot point to a particular word or sentence that summarizes or represents an inferred main idea. Summarizing or inferring requires reconstructing what has been encountered – a mental task that can be very difficult for a young mind. Math for youngsters is concrete, thus more accessible and attainable. Language is abstract. No wonder young children cheer when reading is replaced my math.

It does not have to be this way.  Here is my advice to teachers about making reading and writing more enjoyable and successful for children. Make better use of the familiar and the meaningful:

•      Use rhymes, songs and stories that are familiar and memorable.
•      Use invented stories and real observations, discoveries and experiences dictated by children and transcribed by teachers (constantly transcribe children’s speech to text).
•     Dramatize and improvise familiar stories.
•      Use choral reading and reader’s theatre
•      Connect reading and writing to math, science, social studies, sports and recreation
•      Give equal time to writing (learning to write is learning to read)
•       Surround children with their own written language (flip charts, walls of their stories, reports, drawings with captions)

Learning to read and write can be at least as enjoyable as learning math and science if the teacher uses the experienced world as a bridge to the abstract world.