Literacy Sprouting

Over the past few years, my boyfriend and I have taken up gardening not only as a healthy hobby, but also as a way of decreasing our ecological footprint and enhancing our sustainability as members of our community. By growing as much produce as possible by seed, we rarely have to buy vegetables at the market between the months of May and September. Through our endeavor, we have discovered that success in gardening involves precision and incredible attention to detail, just like success in mathematics involves precision in language and procedure. Successful growing is also dependant upon the gardeners’ ability to adjust to the unpredictability of the elements in nature. Similarly, successful math learning hinges upon the students’ ability to be flexible with procedures and to critically analyze problem solving situations in order to determine an appropriate strategy for any given situation.

These parallels between math and gardening can be used to summarize some of my conclusions about the successful development of math literacy among secondary students. The acquisition of math literacy is a necessary component of success in the study of mathematics that should be stressed during earlier years of education for appropriate mathematical development through grades 2-12. As the gardener must till the soil before planting seeds, the teacher must stress mathematical literacy before productive problem solving skills can be developed. Introducing the basics of math literacy (reading, writing, listening to, talking about, and watching procedures) is not enough for the true development of literacy. Rather, some conditions must be met for students to be mathematically literate, just like specific conditions must be met for the planted seeds to flourish.

The primary element needed for seed growth is water, comparable to the math language (from content vocabulary to number proficiency) needed before applied and meaningful learning can occur. Next, the seedling takes in sunlight and nutrients, which parallels the students’ intake of teacher provided tools that enhance the development of reading, writing, listening, viewing, and speaking skills. Such tools include procedural development in conjunction with guided and practiced templates for written, spoken, and drawn communication. To advance literacy development even further, the teacher must create a respectful, safe community environment whereby students are able to practice their tools as they learn new math concepts. This is the time when teachers have the ability to enhance literacy development, rather than allow it to plateau. Similarly, the gardener has the power to encourage plant growth even further through proper fertilization and nurturing of the environment. Translating back to math, once literacy has sprouted, it must be fostered daily and yearly for meaningful math learning to take place.

The picture above depicts a variety of lettuce plants, all of which started from tiny seeds. The nature of the photograph relays another interesting parallel between math and gardening. Notice how the plants are spaced—not too far apart but not too close so that growth is hindered. In a similar manner, student development of math literacy must be balanced between guided teaching, collaborative exploration, and self-discovery. Excellence in math literacy does not occur in an isolated bubble. Students need each other to gain confidence in conjecture-making and reasoning, which correlate to the process standards intricately tied to literacy development—those of communication and problem solving. Fostering a warm environment where student voice is always valued is an essential component of teacher development of student literacy.

Gardening is not only a great metaphor for mathematical literacy development, it is also an awesome mathematical model. In fact, my friend who tutors an Algebra I class at Humbolt High School helped her students begin a gardening project last week as an application to their study of rate of change. In doing math through gardening, the retention and meaningful understanding of concepts is maximized. Relevant concepts of growth rate, dependence relations, variance, mixing, area, and perimeter can be applied to gardening. As a teacher, I will use similar projects accompanied by academic papers incorporating math concepts with the physical doing of math. This is the perfect example of how we as teachers can stimulate the development of literacy in our students while incorporating practical life lessons that promote a healthy community.