Writing Becomes Part of the Equation : Education: Some math teachers are requiring students to do more than learn by rote. They now must be able to expound upon concepts in plain English.

Mathematics and writing have traditionally been regarded as so different that it wouldn’t matter if the subjects were taught in different buildings at opposite ends of campus.

But across the Westside, math teachers are taking the unusual step of handing out writing assignments. The topic is math, and the results are the beginnings of what could become a new literary genre.

“I’ll never forget the beauty of fractals, those infinite patterns which took up a finite area,” wrote Santa Monica High School pre-calculus student David Hearn. “Now I begin to see fractals everywhere I look in nature--in ice, mountain ranges, in leaves, in shorelines, in crystals.”

From geometry to calculus, students are not only asked to apply formulas and rules by rote. They must also be able to expound upon complex mathematical concepts in plain English.

The act of writing forces students to think through concepts and understand them more clearly, said Gretchen Davis, chairwoman of the Santa Monica High School math department. At the same time, they learn to present their ideas in writing, a valuable skill that many stereotypical math types miss out on.

“An engineer may be considered brilliant at being able to solve equations,” Davis said. “But what good is it if they can’t communicate what they’ve done to others?”

The nationwide educational reform movement to include writing in all subjects, popularly known as “writing across the curriculum,” began in the mid-’70s with the work of language theorists James Moffett and Janet Emig, said Susie Hakansson, director of the UCLA Mathematics Project. The UCLA project is one of 17 centers in California that provide training to local math teachers in instruction methods and theories.

But the use of writing as a tool for learning in math class has tended to lag behind other subjects where it is more naturally applied, like English.

Two trends help bring writing to the forefront in math. For years, teachers have been encouraged to ask more open-ended questions, which require analysis and explanation as opposed to yes-no answers.

The idea of keeping portfolios of student work also reached math classes in the past few years. Used in humanities classes since the mid-’80s, the assessment tool shows a student’s progress over the course of a semester. Portfolios may be used as a benchmark of measuring achievement.

Teachers often ask students to write about the work they choose to include in their portfolios. They may also write personal essays about the subject at hand.

“Portfolios are used everywhere, but in mathematics it is the most alien.” Davis said. “We are so used to being cut-and-dried.”

The trend toward writing grew from a desire to prepare students to compete in the global economy, UCLA’s Hakansson said. Learning to recognize relationships and analyze data, hallmarks of writing, are more important than memorizing facts and formulas.

“Employers are looking for employees who can communicate, who can work cooperatively with others and who can solve problems,” she said.

Generally, high school math teachers in the Culver City, Santa Monica-Malibu, Beverly Hills and Los Angeles Unified school districts have broad discretion about how much emphasis to place on writing and portfolios.

But pressure to require writing in math class is mounting.

Guidelines from the state Office of Education now strongly recommend that writing be used as an instructional tool in mathematics. The guidelines are advisory only, but they are backed up by a growing verbal emphasis in state and national standardized math tests.

Math sections of the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) and of the California Assessment Program (CAP) tests now include open-ended questions that require writing skills. School districts are often judged and compared by standardized test scores, and some state funds are awarded based upon score improvement.

At Santa Monica High School, about half of the 16 math teachers require students to keep journals or portfolios in their classes.

Davis, for example, asked her pre-calculus students to write an autobiography detailing experiences with numbers. One student wrote how numbers once comforted her.

“My earliest memories of counting go back to age five when I was moving to the United States,” the student wrote. “Not only did I count the passengers, but also the flight attendants, the plane windows, the complimentary peanuts. . . . I didn’t count everything because I was interested in learning and counting, rather I did it because I was bored and I was scared. Everywhere we went, I saw unfamiliar faces and heard a language that I did not know.”

Davis also asked students to create their own word problems involving sinusoidal equations, or functions described by undulating sine waves.

One student found an example of sinusoidal motion in bungee jumping. Another student posed a problem in which the goal was to avoid falling into an acid pit by jumping off a moving wheel at just the right time.

Celeste Reinking came up with a word problem on a very accessible subject: “Forty minutes after eating the granola bar, you eat a Snickers bar. Since this has a lot more sugar, your blood sugar level will rise. . . . Write an equation for your level after you eat the Snickers bar.”

Most students say writing makes math more interesting.

“It’s more personal,” said Kim Hawkins. “It’s better than coming into class and learning numbers like a zombie.”

Some students and teachers, however, would just as soon keep writing out of the math classroom. Santa Monica High School math teacher Darrell Mittler said he believes in the traditional method of repetition as the most effective method.

“I may be one of the last of the Mohicans,” he said.

It also bothers him, he said, that math teachers and students are expected to be good at English, especially foreign students. Many math buffs are interested in the abstractness of numbers, not the concrete act of piecing together written discourses, he said.

He believes in open-ended questions, however, and sees portfolios becoming standard. But he wonders if the excitement over math writing will be a passing fad.