The Benefits and Demands of Journal Writing in a Mathematics Classroom

While mathematics teachers believe that student journal writing is beneficial, however, not many have tried to implement writing in their classrooms. I began a project that places journal writing at the center of my Course II class. The main purpose of my project was to see how daily journal writings affected the teacher\u27s practice and to assess its benefits and demands. Even before beginning the project, I had anticipated that time was going to be a factor, which it was. What I had not anticipated was the extent to which good mathematical discourse must be modeled in order to establish a viable discourse community which, in tum, enabled students to write quality journals, to deepen their thinking, to heighten their interest in mathematics, and to establish an atmosphere of trust and respect--in brief, to transform the classroom and to good measure my own teaching. Upon the completion of this project, I came to the following conclusions: writing in mathematics helped me to learn that students are capable of more than we give them credit for and writing in mathematics is a powerful tool that helps to heighten a student\u27s understanding