Journal of the Mathematics Council of the Alberta Teachers’ Association
Volume 39 Issue 2, June 2002
30 – 35
Communicating in the Language of Mathematics
Larry Buschman
As the classroom mathematics curriculum expands to encompass the entire range of skills included in the NCTM’s Curriculum and Evaluation Standards for School Mathematics ( 1989), the process by which a student arrives at the answer to a problem becomes as important as the answer itself. Answers alone often fail to reveal the nature of a student’s thinking, the strategies used in the problem-solving process or the level of understanding. Additionally, the standards document includes the expectation that students will be able to “relate their everyday language to mathematical language and symbols” (NCTM 1989, 26).
