Strategy 1: Culturally relevant teaching method that built on students’ everyday life

● Use multicultural referents and materials in lessons.

● Build on students’ informal mathematical knowledge and build on students’ cultural and

experiential knowledge (e.g., designing word problems that grow out of their everyday

life or are applicable to their everyday life).

● Orientations to students’ culture and experience.

● Develop tools of critical mathematical thinking and critical thinking about knowledge in

general.

● Give a variety of mathematics assignments in which the students investigated aspects of

their neighborhoods and communities.

● Tap into bilingual students’ home cultures to support math learning (e.g., discussing

possible at-home activities with parents and provide families with activities that they can

do at home with their kids). Build classroom activities from the "funds of knowledge"

that are present in their family networks and invite parents to teach.

● Encourage students to talk about their own knowledge through the “experience-text-

relationship” method.

● Possible activities: role playing (e.g., virtual grocery, buyers, vendors, and plastic money).

Have students run the “school stores”.

Strategy 2: Have students talk formally about mathematics as they solve problems. There

are 4 kinds of the talk according to different situations:

● Procedural talk: lays out the steps taken to solve a problem

 ● Conceptual talk: about the reasons for calculating in particular ways or for using

particular procedures

● Regulatory talk: for classroom management

● Contextual talk: to bring in background information when students are solving word

problems

E.g., identify the referents of it and this one and refer to numbers or symbols instead of

the pronouns and demonstratives that are typical of contexts where everyone can see the

symbols on the blackboard.

Strategy 3: Have students work in groups

● Help them attend to the details of the problem, and then allow them to engage in

discussion among themselves about the problem and its solution. Students become

confident in their problem solving ability when they present their strategies and the

strategies are discussed by the group.

Strategy 4: During the interaction process, revoice students’ contributions.

● Use technical language, creating experiences in which these words are simply used to

express meaning in mathematics.

Strategy 5: Read word problems out loud together to unpack the meanings

● Especially in the dense noun phrases.

● Clarify relationships that are constructed in the verbs and conjunctions, as well as make

explicit what might have been left implicit in the formulation of the problem.

Strategy 6: Instead of only focusing on the vocabulary, there are other modes of

representations beyond verbal language for students to communicate mathematically:

● Gestures

● Manipulatives (e.g., some concrete objects)

● Drawing

● Students’ everyday experiences

● Students’ first language

● Code switching

● Role playing

● Mathematical representations (e.g., graphical and symbolic representations including

demonstrations and graphical depiction)

Strategy 7: If material is presented verbally, bilingual students benefit when:

● The rate of speech is slowed

● Important terms are defined

 ● Syntactic structures are simplified by using shortened, regularly patterned sentences.

● Visual support

● Schematic drawings

● Demonstrations

Strategy 8: Use what students already know to ask them the next question or to point out

the next fact.

● Take the time to ask students how they arrived at the answer to a problem.

Strategy 9: Use children’s real name in word problems or have them write their own word

problems, individually or in pairs.

● They can use vocabulary they are comfortable with, pictures, and drawings to complete

their word problems.

● Encourage children to use everyday experiences from home for creating word problems.

● To make the word problems more interesting: have students explore topics that they have

never experienced directly by using fantasy.

Strategy 10: Some specific methods to use graphs:

● Use student-generated products

● Use gestures and objects to clarify meaning

● Accept and build on students’ responses

● Discuss multiple interpretations of graphs

● Bring different ways of thinking about the graphs

 Reference

● Mary E. Brenner. (1998). Adding Cognition to the Formula for Culturally Relevant

Instruction in Mathematics.

● Mary J Schleppegrell. (2007). The Linguistic Challenges of Mathematics Teaching and

Learning: A Research Review, Reading & Writing Quarterly, 23:2, 147-159.

● Judit Moschkovich. (2002). A Situated and Sociocultural Perspective on Bilingual

Mathematics Learners, Mathematical Thinking and Learning, 4:2-3, 196-200.

● Garrison, Leslie and Mora, Jill Kerper. (1999). Adapting Mathematics Instruction for

English Language Learners: The Language-Concept Connections. Changing the Faces of

Mathematics:Perspectives on Latinos: 35-48.

● Walter G. Secada & Deborah A. Carey. (1990). Teaching Mathematics with

Understanding to limited English Proficient Students. Urban Diversity Series No. 101

● Judit Moschkovich. (2009). How Language and Graphs Support Conversation in a

Bilingual Mathematics Classroom. Multilingualism in Mathematics Classrooms: Global

Perspectives: 78-97

● Eric Gutstein & Pauline Lipman. (1997). Culturally Relevant Mathematics Teaching in

a Mexican American Context. Journal for Research in Mathematics Education 1997, Vol.

28, No. 6, 709–737