Read Your Calculus Book for Better Grades!


James Chang
Novice Teacher, Mathematics

Want a higher GPA? Read your calculus book! Disagree? The new wave in education is pushing to extend reading beyond English to mathematics and the sciences. Reading is a comprehension skill. If used correctly, absolutely anyone can do better in all fields of academia. The idea is to tie all subjects together in a process of puzzling through a textÖthe stuff real reading is made of. This text can be anything from an excerpt from Frederick Douglas‰ autobiography to a complex word problem involving two trains and a crashing point. Either way, a student is engaged in a process of problem solving when reading, which is what goes on inside the reader‰s mind.

There are tools that a reader can use to sharpen and refine his/her reading skills. Ever get lost on a road trip somewhere? It‰s a terrible feeling! How humbling it is to admit ignorance and ask for directions. Well, men, it‰s time to eat humble pie! While most people hate to admit it, questioning is an essential tool of reading. It‰s important to know that there is no shame in admitting confusion and asking for help. For readers, being conscious of the questions that come to mind as you read is part of solving the problem. In a classroom setting, there is so much pressure not to show anyone that ‹I don‰t understand.Š So, it must be made clear from the very start that every question can be a learning experience, and that there is no such thing as a bad question.

Another tool of the reading process is prediction. The key in predicting is looking for words in the text. For example, when you run across the word ‹hence,Š expect a concluding point. When you find the words ‹in other words,Š expect a clarification. These words give us guidelines as we read. In other words, they are like the signs on the road that tell us how fast or how slow we should read the next few sentences. Hence, prediction is a simple yet powerful tool to analyzing a text.

Summarization is yet another tool of the reading process. This is to squeeze a bulk of information into a few sentences. When you summarize, you extract only the important points out of a text and weed out the miscellaneous material. This is a great way to rethink and retell your newly found knowledge. Using these tools of reading in all subjects gives us greater mastery over all disciplines. Learning how to extract knowledge from all sorts of texts gives you power to read for any subject. Reading an English novel is certainly different from reading your physics book, but the mental processes of questioning, predicting, and summarizing that you use while reading is the same. Teachers are encouraged to open their students to a wide range of reading materials. Fill your classrooms with magazines and books from anywhere to everything! Spark the students‰ interests. Exposing students to all these areas allows them not only to begin to form a direction in their education based on what they really like, but also encourages them to see education as something that is to be desired, and not stuffed down their throats.