In most reading classes, students are taught fix up strategies. Fix up strategies are what good readers use when they come to an unfamiliar word or when they stop understanding what they’re reading.
The assumption that most math teachers have is that the students will use these fix up strategies in their math classroom which may be true for some but not all. Based on my experience with struggling learners, unless they were explicitly taught how to use reading comprehension strategies in other subjects it just doesn’t happen.
In math, there are all kinds of unfamiliar math words and most struggling readers won’t learn or even understand them all. However, teaching students how to use words that they do understand to define math vocabulary that they don’t understand will give them a tool that will help them to persevere despite their learning deficits.
There are a ton of articles and