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Views of what constitute numerate behaviour are rapidly changing and an emphasis is now being placed on effective communication as a vital aspect of numeracy. Just as students need to be literate in a complex and changing world, they also need to be numerate. In the English classroom teachers can play a key role in helping students to develop the spoken and written language skills they need to communicate their mathematical knowledge to others. English teachers can also assist students to develop the critical reading and viewing skills emphasised in the 'Being numerate' key element of the Essential Learnings Framework 1 Being numerate not only includes numeracy skills and understandings, but it also involves the critical and life-related aspects of being able to interpret information thoughtfully and accurately when it is represented in numerical and graphic form. This aspect of numeracy is akin to critical literacy - being able to recognise that information can be constructed to influence the reader or viewer. Developing the critical skills to analyse quantitative and spatial information when it is presented in various forms - for example graphs, tables, spreadsheets, charts and comparative models - enables young people to make more informed decisions, personally in everyday life, as consumers and as citizens. The following extract from Numerate Students Numerate Adults exemplifies the ways in which teachers may develop and enhance students' numeracy through their teaching of English and/or literacy. Early years of schooling Children in a kinder-prep group are retelling the story of Goldilocks and the three bears. They have decided to build the bears' house with large wooden blocks. As they do so, their teacher talks with them about what a bear's house might look like. They discuss what shapes bears' houses might have, and whether these shapes might be different from those of their own houses. Their teacher shows the children how a floor plan is drawn from a bird's eye view, and asks them to help him draw a floor plan of the bears' bedrooms and porridge eating area. This activity makes demands on students' numeracy by requiring them to recognise and describe common shapes, using their own language. It also requires them to interpret numbers when they are used for different purposes, such as counting and putting things in order. The activity contributes to students' numeracy by enabling them to use appropriate language to describe the shapes of objects. It also enables them to begin to recognise and interpret common symbols on plans, and to begin to understand the use of a bird's eye perspective. Middle years of schooling Some year 7 students are trying to make sense of a magazine article on health foods and on Australians' eating habits in general. The article includes the percentages of Australians who eat each of several kinds of food, healthy and otherwise. These percentages are given, not just for Australians as a whole, but also for various sub-groups within Australian society, such as females and males, and country dwellers and city dwellers. Their teacher has asked the students to summarise this information and then use it as the basis for structuring a questionnaire seeking parents' views on the sort of food that should be sold in their school's canteen. This activity makes demands on students' numeracy by requiring them to understand how numbers can be expressed as percentages. It also requires them to read tables and graphs to obtain information. The activity contributes to students' numeracy by enabling them to understand and use common methods of summarising data. It also enables them to judge the quality and appropriateness of data collection, for both the original article and their intended questionnaire. Later years of schooling Some year 11 students are evaluating television and magazine advertisements that use statistics, either embedded in text or displayed in graphs and tables, to get their message across. The students have examined a range of such advertisements for common consumer products, as well as ones designed to inform people of the effects of smoking on public health. Their teacher asks each student to choose one of the advertisements and rewrite it so that it conveys a message similar to that of the original, but without using any graphs or tables, or any numerals embedded in text. Some students are able to identify certain advertising 'tricks', such as the use of misleading scales on graphs and three-dimensional drawings. These students also come to realise the highly selective nature of the information given in the advertisements. This activity makes demands on students' numeracy by requiring them to understand common methods of summarising and displaying data, such as tables, pie graphs, 'silhouetted' blocks and overlapping shapes. It also requires them to interpret numbers when they are used for different purposes. The activity contributes to students' numeracy by enabling them to recognise and use different ways to express the same numerical value, when rewriting their advertisement. It also enables them to recognise and interpret the conventions of visual representation, such as how specific geometric shapes and combinations of shapes can be manipulated to achieve a desired effect; and to analyse how the positioning, size, background, orientation and colour of the text enhance or detract from the messages. For a teaching unit with a numeracy component see Libby Robinson's inquiry unit 'Becoming a Media Megastar' Other useful links dealing with the links between English/literacy and numeracy include: Numeracy Across Learning Areas
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