Resources For Teaching Mathematics In Bilingual Classrooms

Using strengths-based approaches to support development in mathematics It’s time to re-imagine what’s possible and celebrate the brilliance multilingual learners bring to today’s classrooms. Innovative teaching strategies can position these learners as leaders in mathematics. Yet, as the number of multilingual learners in North American schools grows, many teachers have not had opportunities to gain the competencies required to teach these learners effectively, especially in disciplines such as mathematics. Multilingual learners—historically called English Language Learners—are expected to interpret the meaning of problems, analyze, make conjectures, evaluate their progress, and discuss and understand their own approaches and the approaches of their peers in mathematics classrooms. Thus, language plays a vital role in mathematics learning, and demonstrating these competencies in a second (or third) language is a challenging endeavor. Based on best practices and the authors’ years of research, this guide offers practical approaches that equip grades K-8 teachers to draw on the strengths of multilingual learners, partner with their families, and position these learners for success. Readers will find: • A focus on multilingual students as leaders • A strength-based approach that draws on students’ life experiences and cultural backgrounds • An emphasis on maintaining high expectations for learners’ capacity for mastering rigorous content • Strategies for representing concepts in different formats • Stop and Think questions throughout and reflection questions at the end of each chapter • Try It! Implementation activities, student work examples, and classroom transcripts With case studies and activities that provide a solid foundation for teachers’ growth and exploration, this groundbreaking book will help teachers and teacher educators engage in meaningful, humanized mathematics instruction.

This book that explores the mathematics education of Latinos/as in 13 original research studies. Each chapter represents research that grounds mathematics instruction for Latinos/as in the resources to be found in culture and language. By inverting the deficit perspective, this volume redresses the shortcomings found in the previous literature on Latino/a learners. Each study frames language (e.g. bilingualism) not as an obstacle to learning, but as a resource for mathematical reasoning. Other chapters explore the notion of cultural variation not as a liability but as a tool for educators to build upon in the teaching of mathematics. Specifically, the book reframes culture as a focus on the practices, objects, inscriptions, or people that connect mathematical concepts to student thinking and experiences, both in and out of school. The book's four sections divide the research: The first section of the book focuses on mathematic learning in classrooms, specifically exploring bilingual, Latino/a students; the second section explores Latino/a learners in communities, including the role parents can play in advancing learning; the third section includes chapters focused on teacher professional growth; the final section concerns the assessment (and mis-assessment) of Latino/a learners. The research shared in this volume provides ample evidence that mathematics educators who choose to ignore language or culture in their pedagogy risk shortchanging their Latino/a students.

The author captures three inter-related dilemmas that lie at the heart of teaching mathematics in multilingual classrooms: code-switching, mediation, and transparency. She provides a sharp analysis and strong theoretical grounding, pulling together research related to the relationship between language and mathematics, communicating mathematics, and mathematics in bi-/multilingual settings and offers a direct challenge to dominant research on communication in mathematics classrooms.

This book offers an international perspective on the current and future state of the research, focusing, in particular, on the role and use of language in mathematics school teaching and learning. It focuses on the development of a unified view of the languages of the learners, of the teachers and of mathematics by considering the role of language in the learning, teaching and doing of mathematics in the classroom, and the current richness and plurality of language and culture. The contributions in this volume combine to show how views of language and of language research in mathematics education have changed significantly in recent decades, and how they will continue to change and become even more complex and challenging in the era of diversity. All of these contributions by leading scholars are grouped into two sections for emphasis on issues of: • Theorising the complexity of language in mathematics teaching and learning • Opening spaces of learning with mathematics classroom research on language This book will be of great interest to mathematics teachers, teacher educators, curriculum developers and mathematics education researchers who deal with the study and implementation of pedagogies of mathematics teaching and learning, specifically in regions of the world which are culturally and sociolinguistically diverse.

Contemporary concerns in mathematics education recognize that in the increasingly technological and globalized world, with concomitant change in population demographics (e.g. immigration, urbanization) and a change in the status of languages (e.g. English as a dominant language of science and technology) multilingualism in classrooms is a norm rather than an exception. Shifts in perspective also view language not simply as an instrument for cognition with all learners equipped with this instrument in service of learning, although clearly in the classroom that remains of importance. Rather, it is now also being acknowledged that language use is inherently political, so that the language that gets official recognition in the classroom is invariably the language of the powerful elite, or the dominant societal language, or in the case of post-colonial contexts the language of the colonisers. From this socio-political role of language in learning quite different issues arise for teaching, learning and curriculum for linguistically marginalized learners than that of cognition (e.g. immigrants, second language learners, other). Policies on language in education are being considered and re-considered with specific reference to mathematics teaching and learning. Given the policy environment, globally the proposed publication is timely. This edited collection draws on recent, emerging insights and understandings about the approaches to improving policy and practice in mathematics education and mathematics teacher education in multilingual settings. It presents, and discusses critically, examples of work from a range of contexts and uses these examples to draw out key issues for research in education in language diverse settings including teaching, learning, curriculum and fit these with appropriate policy and equity approaches. With contributions from all over the world, especially novice researchers in low income countries, this book is a valuable resource for courses in Mathematics Education and related social sciences both at the graduate and undergraduate levels, as well as for students of international development.

Today's mathematics classrooms increasingly include students for whom English is a second language. Teaching Mathematics to English Language Learners provides readers a comprehensive understanding of both the challenges that face English language learners (ELLs) and ways in which educators might address them in the secondary mathematics classroom. Framed by a research perspective, Teaching Mathematics to English Language Learners presents practical instructional strategies for engaging learners that can be incorporated as a regular part of instruction. The authors offer context-specific strategies for everything from facilitating classroom discussions with all students, to reading and interpreting math textbooks, to tackling word problems. A fully annotated list of math web and print resources completes the volume, making this a valuable reference to help mathematics teachers meet the challenges of including all learners in effective instruction. Features and updates to this new edition include: An updated and streamlined Part 1 provides an essential overview of ELL theory in a mathematics specific context. Additional practical examples of mathematics problems and exercises make turning theory into practice easy when teaching ELLs New pedagogical elements in Part 3 include tips on harnessing new technologies, discussion questions and reflection points. New coverage of the Common Core State Standards, as well as updates to the web and print resources in Part 4.

English language learners share a basic need—to engage, and be engaged, in meaningful mathematics. Through guiding principles and instructional tools, together with classroom vignettes and video clips, this book shows how to go beyond good teaching to support ELLs in learning challenging mathematics while developing language skill. Position your students to share the valuable knowledge that they bring to the classroom as they actively build and communicate their understanding. The design of this book is interactive and requires the reader to move back and forth between the chapters and online resources at www.nctm.org/more4u. Occasionally, the reader is asked to stop and reflect before reading further in a chapter. At other times, the reader is asked to view video clips of teaching practices for ELLs or to refer to graphic organizers, observation and analysis protocols, links to resources, and other supplementary materials. The authors encourage the reader to use this resource in professional development.