Three Reads Strategy

Three Reads is a short routine for a math word problem. The student reads the same item three times, each time for one job. It was built for language-heavy math, and it fits adult basic-skills classes because those classes fail on the reading of the problem as often as on the arithmetic.

What the routine is

Jeff Zwiers and colleagues at Stanford’s Understanding Language project published Three Reads in 2017 as Mathematical Language Routine 6. The student does not solve on the first pass. Read 1 is the story: What is this situation about? Read 2 is the quantities: What can be counted or measured, and how are those amounts related? Read 3 reveals the question and asks how to approach it. The question is held back until the third read so the student cannot skip straight to a number. Zwiers et al., 2017. Illustrative Mathematics uses the same three passes and describes the point as amplifying the language of the problem rather than rewriting it into a simpler item. Illustrative Mathematics, 2022. A classroom script from TNTP puts the three jobs in a slightly different order, context, then question, then quantities, but the mechanism is the same: one purpose per read. TNTP, 2022.

Why it fits adult basic-skills learners

There is no randomized trial of Three Reads in adult basic education. The case rests on what the routine does to the load these learners actually face.

Word problems are a gate on high-stakes adult tests. Lynda Ginsburg’s 2022 review in Adult Literacy Education notes that GED, HiSET, and placement exams are full of them, and that program funding often depends on those scores. Adult learners also stall on the story, not only the operation. Unfamiliar contexts, dense sentences, and “real life” settings they do not share raise anxiety before any calculation starts. Ginsburg, 2022.

Three Reads cuts that load into three small jobs. A stressed adult who tries to understand, extract the numbers, and solve in one reading often freezes. One question per read gives a place to start. Read 1 can be the phone speaking the item. Read 2 is copying the numbers large. Read 3 is circling the target word, mean, median, or the first operation. That matches how adult classes already have to work: short time, mixed reading levels, and a calculator that helps only after the student knows which job the item is asking for.

It also keeps the item intact. Simplifying every GED stem so the reading disappears removes the skill the test will demand. The routine leaves the wording in place and gives three passes at it. For multilingual adults, that second and third pass is where an unknown word or an odd sentence can be named without the whole problem being abandoned. Illustrative Mathematics, 2022.

Use it as a 3-minute entry, not a second lesson. Read, say the story in one line, list the quantities, circle the question, then solve. Stop there.

References

Ginsburg, L. (2022). Mathematical word problems in adult education: What the research says. Adult Literacy Education, 4(3), 66–71. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1369748.pdf

Illustrative Mathematics. (2022, August 9).

Tackling wordy problems: How the Three Reads math language routine supports access for all learners. https://illustrativemathematics.blog/2022/08/09/tackling-wordy-problems-how-the-three-reads-math-language-routine-supports-access-for-all-learners/

TNTP. (2022).

Three Reads routine. https://tntp.org/wp-content/uploads/Tools/three-reads-routine.pdf

Zwiers, J., Dieckmann, J., Rutherford-Quach, S., Daro, V., Skarin, R., Weiss, S., & Malamut, J. (2017). Principles for the design of mathematics curricula: Promoting language and content development. Stanford University, Understanding Language / SCALE. https://ul.stanford.edu/resource/principles-design-mathematics-curricula-and-mlrs