Using students background Facts

knowledge
Connecting students’ experiences at home
and with family to those of the mathematics
classroom. Family and community activities,
such as playing games, weaving, cooking,
and story-telling, can serve as cultural and
linguistic resources in learning mathematics.
Aspects of Culturally
Responsive Instruction
 Percentage of culturally and
linguistically diverse children in
the United States continues to
increase.
 9.2 percent or about 4.4 million
students participated in an ELL
program in public schools. About
24 percent (almost 18 million) of
U.S. children are Latino.

Culturally responsive mathematics

instruction includes attention to
mathematical thinking, language, and
culture, it applies to all students including
those from different ethnic groups,
socioeconomic levels, etc.

Components of Mathematics
Mathematical connections: helping students
see that mathematical ideas are
interrelated will fill in or deepen their
understanding of and connections to
previous taught content.

Context connections: the context of

creating bracelets grounds student thinking
in something familiar so they can focus on
reasoning about the mathematical
relationships. Making problems connected
to social, peers, historical and cultural
context.
Culturally and
Linguistic Diverse
Students
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Academic Vocabulary
Teaching the academic language of
mathematics evolves over time.Valuing a
students’s native language is one of the
ways you value his or her cultural
heritage.
In a mathematical classrooms students
can communicate in their native
languages while continuing their English
language development.
Vocabulary support can happen
throughout a lesson, as well as reinforced
before or after a lesson.
Additional support for students to
understand vocabulary are:
 Self-made math dictionaries
 Foldables of key words for a topic
 Games
 Interactive word wall
“If a child can’t learn the way
we teach, maybe we should
teach the way they learn”.
- Ignacio Estrada
Accomodations for ELLs
ELLs perform better when a test is given in
their native language. Having the students
show and/or explain their strategy used it
provides them options for them to use
words and picture to communicate what
they are thinking.
Diagnostic interviews provide the teacher
to observe what content or language the
student is still struggling or already knows.
 It can also help prior the instruction
to assess the mathematical and
language needs of the student.
Accomodations for all students
Having strategies to make sure that you
meet all the needs of the students and the
assessment itself can be accessible to the
children. Providing word walls and
sentence starters for ELL.