Diversity in the math classroom

General Culturally relevant instruction stays focused on the big ideas of mathematics and helps students engage in and stay focused on the big ideas. 

Strategies to incorporate Cultural Diversity in the classroom - establish a classroom environment where everyone feels their ideas are worth consideration. The way that you assign groups, seat students, and call on students sends clear messages about who has power in the classroom. Distributing power among students leads to empowered students.
 

- Six mathematical behaviours have been found across time and culture: counting, measuring, locating, designing and building, playing games (e.g., "Mancala"), and explaining (e.g., telling stories) (Bishop, 2001). When your curriculum takes you to one of these topics, invite students and their families to share their experiences and use these experiences to engage in the content.

- focus on important mathematics, make content relevant, incorporate students' identities, and ensure shared power as part of what you naturally think about as you plan, teach, and assess, then you are likely going to lead a classroom where all students are challenged and supported.

 

FNMI students - Indigenous languages tend to originate from an oral tradition: This indicates ways of learning that emphasize hands-on experiences, apprenticeship perspectives, emphasis on mastery of skills, and visual-spatial learning.  Learning, then, is viewed as holistic, experiential, and rooted in relationships, nature, movement, tradition, language, and culture (Cappon, 2008). Listening, watching, and doing mathematics through relationship and real-life modelling are important ways of learning.

  English Language Learners - Rather than assume that mathematics is a universal language or limit the use of mathematical terms and symbols, teachers need to maximize the language used, but do so in multiple ways to support language development while keeping expectations for mathematics learning high. In the following example, the teacher uses several techniques that provide support for her ELL learners
- discuss as a class terms that may not be familiar and offer definitions in a way ELLs can make sense of
- model the mathematics before starting the problem
- pair ELL students with someone who can give language support
- use think/pair/share at the beginning of a lesson to give information as a class that can support ELLs
- use visuals and concrete models as support
- do not diminish the challenge
- allow students to use native language as needed "code-switching"
- state clear objectives at beginning of lesson
- simplify instructional language without simplifying the task
- create accessible problems
- explicitly teach vocabulary - word walls with visuals, graphic organizers, anchor charts, recording tables, play games focussed on vocabulary
- As you analyze a lesson, you must identify terms related to the mathematics and to the context that may need explicit attention. Consider the following task
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A traditional math lesson

We had to read a description of a traditional math lesson and then talk about our connections to it as either a student or teacher.  The lesson described has the teacher asking the students to pull out their homework from the previous day.  The teacher walks down the rows checking to see who completed it.  The teacher then calls out the answers for each question while the students check their work.  Following that, the teacher does two new questions on the board outlining the steps to complete each question and then assigns new questions.

My connections to this lesson come straight out of my elementary school days.  While I really liked math and did well in it, it was based in rote learning.  The difference from the lesson above was that we were encouraged during the take-up of work to share our answers on the board.  This was also done during the lesson phase sometimes.  I don't remember many word-based problems and I don't recall doing any collaborative work.  There was almost always some homework that repeated the questions we did in class.

I can't connect to this as a teacher because I haven't taught math this way.  I have seen other teachers teach this way but it is often mixed with some collaborative learning and lots of teacher attention while students do their textbook work.