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Teaching Math to Multilingual Learners: Strategy of the Week

Each week we share one strategy that you can use to meet the needs of your diverse multilingual learners in secondary content classes. This week’s listening strategy is specifically for secondary math teachers but could be adapted for use in many content areas.

Strategy: Supporting Materials

  • Language Objective: I can use supporting materials to help me understand what I hear.

Supporting Materials: How-To

Using supporting materials enhances the meaning of your instruction and helps students clarify confusing concepts by helping them to make connections and construct their own meanings. Here are some ideas of supporting materials that you can use to teach math:

  • Hands-on manipulatives: Physical objects that students can manipulate to understand a concept. Examples include a physical number line, foam blocks, or shapes cut out of paper.
  • Pictures, visuals, and other multimedia help students visualize difficult concepts. You may show charts or graphs or create a visual to help students remember how to graph a line. Videos may also be helpful.
  • Demonstrations provide visual support and modeling. Plan time in each lesson to demonstrate how to use materials, solve problems, and participate in class.

Extra Support for MLs

  • Model how to use manipulatives the first time you give them to students.
  • Allow students at lower proficiency levels to work with peers who speak the same language so they can help each other construct meaning.
  • Add English subtitles to videos.

Example: Math 8

LT: I can find an equation of a line of best fit.

When students are learning about scatter plots and lines of fit, give them physical objects (chips, circular pieces of paper, etc.) to create a scatter plot on a graph. Then let then use a ruler to find a line of best fit and write its equation.

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