ABSTRACT
As an expert reader, with countless years of expertise reading in a range of genres and subject disciplines, people will have very likely found this relatively easy and seemingly ‘natural’ task. By paying attention to the specialised ways of reading, knowing and doing, in each subject discipline, we can recognise that there are both general reading skills and subject-specialist strategies that our pupils need to develop. As soon as a pupil has mastered learning to read, reading to learn initiates this lengthy but vital process of discerning the specialness of reading in subject disciplines. Mathematics is seldom the subject discipline we associate with reading. Indeed, traditional notions of reading appear to clash with real work of maths teachers, as it seldom relies on words, sentences and acts of extended reading. The author ends the chapter with a clarion call to all teachers to engage in dialogue about their pupils’ reading within their subject communities and with bona fide subject experts.
