Using an Adapted Model of Reciprocal Teaching to Help Children Unpack Their Word Sums

Abstract

Many learners struggle to correctly extract the mathematical meaning of a “word sum”. This chapter describes a Year 3 teacher’s experiences of trialling a reciprocal teaching approach as a way of enhancing her learners’ abilities to comprehend word sums. This approach, initially developed as a strategy to help strengthen children’s reading literacy skills, has been taken up by members of the mathematics education community, but little appears as yet to have been done in relation to younger learners, most particularly those who are not learning their mathematics through their dominant language, as is the case for a high percentage of South Africa’s learners. This chapter thus contributes to the knowledge field of researching the use of reciprocal teaching as a strategy for strengthening learners’ meaningful engagement with “word sums” in a linguistically diverse classroom context.