Math for ALL Students

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Math for ALL Students
Rita MacDonald Dr. Tim Whiteford Saint
Michaels College, VT
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What? GED 612 Why?  For teachers For students
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Math has changed

• Increased demand for linguistic proficiency
• Peer discussion to help develop math reasoning
• Essential academic English

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Course Goal--weave together

• updated instruction on math content
• Instruction on methodology for ELLs that also
  benefits others who struggle with language

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• included segments on children from a culture of
  poverty and with specific learning disabilities
• but will focus here on what we learned about math
  for ELLs
• ?
• Math SIOP

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What is SIOP?

• Specific, research-based set of instructional
  strategies for ELLs
• Grade-level, cognitively challenging content
  instruction, combined with systematic ELD, that
  is
• differentiated for level of proficiency in
  Academic English (5-7 years)
• and for cultural diversity
• Echevarria, Vogt and Short, 200

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Essential SIOP Components

• Clearly stated language content objectives
• Building background
• Comprehensible input
• Peer interaction and elaborated discourse
• Metacognitive strategy instruction
• Practice, application, review
• Formative assessment

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Good Fit withProblem-Centered Math

• Connect with where students are
• Make mathematics problematic
• Many ideas and methods are valued
• Students choose and share their methods
• Correctness resides in mathematical argument
• Mistakes are learning sites for everyone
• Making Sense Teaching and Learning Mathematics
• with Understanding. James Hiebert, 1997.

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Professional Learning Community Model

• Learning one anothers talk---instructors as
  learners from teachers to one another
• Teacher-students (classroom teachers, math
  specialists and special educators) to keep the
  work grounded headed in the right direction

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So, what did we learn? Tim was rightits
not always about language.
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Cultural Differences in Math

• Number systems
• Number contexts
• Algorithmic procedures
• Word meanings

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So, its not always about languagebut it
might be.
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Auditory Discrimination Issuesin Number
Vocabulary

• -teen/-ty as in 13, 30..15, 50
• -final th as in 1/10
• Test and train for discrimination as needed

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Number Vocabulary

• Whats thir? Show me thir.
• How about fif?
• And what about eleven twelve?
• Most difficult and nonsensical number vocabulary
  has to be learned in Kindergarten!

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Math Language as Metaphor Bigger and
smaller numberswhich number is bigger? 3 or
8 Which fraction has been reduced? 4/8 or ½
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Some numbers are higher than others
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Math Vocabulary

• Content-specific hypotenuse, quotient, decimal,
  integer
• Common words with math-specific meaning
• Find, prime, power, leg, tree, radical
• Some must be learned as phrases at most, at
  least, morethan, if-(then)
• Homophones sum/some, pie/pi, sign/sine

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Word problemsin every sense of the word!

• Comprehensible input is a real issue
  herecultural and linguistic variables
• Strategies
• Work with the student to construct the
  meaningdrawings, manipulatives, role plays
• Focus on the meaning of operations rather than
  relying on algorithmswhats happening with the
  numbers or quantitiesthen help student look at
  the variety of ways to find the answer

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Universal teaching strategies for math teachers
with ELLs?

• Be a true constructivist! Always find out what
  the S is thinking, and start from there to
  construct meaning together.
• Learn how to scaffold discussions, so that ELLs
  can join in the discourse community. In some
  ways, it IS about language.

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What the Math Teachers Valued Most

• Chart of WIDA proficiency levels and the WIDA
  can do descriptors
• Focus on writing clear Content Objectives
• Comprehensible input strategies
• Strategies for linking new info to Ss background
  knowledge knowing that math varies among
  cultures
• Strategies to increase amount and frequency of
  elaborated discourse in the classroom

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SIOP and Math Resources

• Math Diversity website www.academics.smcvt.edu
  /twhiteford/MathandDiversity/DFI.htm
• VCLA website www.vermontesl.org
• This PowerPoint will soon be on the NNETESOL
  website, www.nnetesol.org

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Contact us at

• rmacdonald_at_smcvt.edu
• twhiteford_at_smcvt.edu