Sequencing in literacy and math: How subjects support each other in school

Jordyn Grau

As educators we know that math and literacy are important subjects to be taught all throughout school but have you ever stopped to think about the connection the two subjects share? Or wondered how literacy can support mathematics? Fluent reading and fluency in math are deeply tied together and can reinforce students’ skills. One way educators can reinforce both fluent math and fluent reading is through the use of sequencing.

What exactly is sequencing, though, and how does it help students become better readers? According to Reading Rockets, a website that offers information on how young kids learn to read and how adults can help, sequencing is the order in which a story takes place, or the beginning, middle, and end of a story.

Sequencing is a key skill that students begin developing in kindergarten, continuing to grow and strengthen this skill throughout their schooling. It is important that children learn how to sequence because it will help them become strong readers, being able to retell a story and recognize the order in which narrative events take place. As children grow and begin reading more complex stories, this skill of sequencing becomes deeper engraved. More complex texts do not always follow a linear narrative, but through the skill of sequencing children will be able to identify the sequence in which the events take place. Additionally, sequencing helps students be confident readers because they can identify and understand the key components of a story. Students that are more confident readers may develop a lifelong love of reading.

How can sequencing support both literacy and mathematics?

One way that sequencing literacy supports mathematics is in word problems. According to Reading Rockets, students as early as kindergarten may begin being introduced to word problems, which is also when students may begin learning story sequencing (see your state standards). Educators can seamlessly support both developing skills by teaching children to view mathematics’ word problems through the lens of story sequencing. Students can learn to read a word problem as a story; being able to identify what they know first, what happens next, and what they are looking for last. These are the same skills that students learn in literacy when reading narrative text.

As children move throughout grade levels, word problems and narrative texts need more complex sequencing skills, becoming more complicated and advanced as the grade level increases. When we teach students to sequence stories, they have literacy cues (for example, when they see the word “then”), to illustrate the order of events. In math, this kind of language cue can also point them to the order of operations needed to solve a word problem. Students will feel more confident when it is time to solve these problems because they have had endless practice integrating these two skills across curricula or content areas.

What are other ways educators might support students to engage in sequential thinking?

Beyond using sequencing for word problems, educators can teach students to view any math problem as a sequence. Sequencing involves identifying what happens first, second (or next), third (or then), fourth (or last), and so on. Once students have learned the vocabulary that cues them into the sequence of stories, they can add these cues to any math problem to help them figure out their next steps. For example, students can be taught to solve addition or subtraction problems by looking at the problem step by step and determine what they will need to do first.

Here’s an example problem:

316+150

The first step a student might take is to ask: “What number is in the ones place.” For this step the student will add together the 6 and the 0, getting the answer of 6.

Following this step, the student will think about what they need to do next. Supporting students to think, “Next, I will add together the numbers in the tens place,” can help them keep track of the order of operations they should perform. The beauty of teaching children the skill of sequencing in math is that the teacher can scaffold the sequence to support the type of math problem being solved by adding or removing steps in the sequence.

Sequencing is an important literacy skill that children start learning as early as kindergarten and can be used to help support mathematics understanding as children progress through school. Educators can use the skill of sequencing to support a variation of math problems, teaching students to view these problems as a “first, next, last” story. When educators seamlessly blend subject learning and skills, they are strengthening the understanding that students have and reinforcing these developing skills.