Math is like Writing??

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Towards the end of a lesson I’ll have the students work on a more challenging problem like the one below:

After showing the steps, and simplifying by cancelling out expressions, I’ll tell the students how good math parallels good writing. I’ll then say “For example…” and write the sentence “I think I am going to go home right about now” on the white board. I’ll then explain to the class why this sentence obviously sucks. I’ll then cross off words one by one, so that I end up with “I’m going home,” which communicates the same exact thing, but is considering “better writing,” because the simplest writing is often the best. I’ll then refer back to the exercise we just went over to hammer home the connection.

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