- Year 2019
- NSF Noyce Award # 1439880
- First Name Kayla
- Last Name Scheitlin
- Institution Malden High School
- Role/Position High school math teacher (Malden High School), Noyce Master Teaching Fellow (Tufts University)
- Workshop Category Track 2: Teaching Fellowships
- Workshop Disciplines Audience Math
- Target Audience Noyce Master Teachers, Noyce Teaching Fellows, School and District Administrators, Undergraduate and/or Graduate Noyce Scholars
- Topics Supporting Each and Every Student
- Session Length 30 minutes
Goals
1) Identify strategies to create a classroom community that recognizes, values, and includes our students learning English.
2) Learn new ways of integrating language into mathematics instruction.
Evidence
This workshop will draw from past work related to strengthening English language learners’ mathematical agency in the classroom (Yoon, 2008; Chval, Pinnow, & Thomas, 2015; Moschkovich, 1999; Turner, Dominguez, Maldonado, & Empson, 2013) and implementing language teaching strategies in math classrooms (Riccomini, Smith, Hughes, & Fries 2015; Zahner, Velazquez, Moschkovich, Vahey, & Lara-Meloy, 2012). This current research supports that English language learners experience more success in math class when teachers actively teach language and vocabulary, create opportunities for students to use language and wrestle with highly cognitively demanding tasks, and recognize and encourage other students’ to recognize their English language learners as agentive problem solvers and mathematical authorities in discussion. Additionally, this workshop will draw extensively from my case study work in my Noyce program. The focus of my Noyce case study for the past two school years has been building community and mathematical agency in my sheltered Math 1 College Prep course. In my case study, I collected videos of whole class discussions and small group work regarding how I have integrated language and mathematics, interviews and surveys with students and peer tutors in which I explored aspects of the class that could be adding or detracting from classroom community, and samples of student work on language worthy tasks. I analyzed these items with colleagues in my case study group and implemented and reflected upon new strategies throughout the two years based on our discussions and feedback. This year, as I implemented these research-based strategies, my students regularly engaged in whole class discussions, grew comfortable speaking with language different peers, and regularly made meaning in my classroom through discourse. In this workshop, I will share evidence from my case study work, including samples of students’ written work and a video of a small group, to demonstrate the strategies I used to create conditions for productive discourse and opportunities for my students learning English to be recognized by their peers, themselves, and me as mathematical authorities in the classroom. Yoon, B. (2008). Uninvited Guests: The Influence of Teachers’ Roles and Pedagogies on the Positioning of English Language Learners in the Regular Classroom. American Educational Research Journal, 45(2), 495–522. https://doi.org/10.3102/0002831208316200 Chval, K., Pinnow, R., & Thomas, A. (2015). Learning how to focus on language while teaching mathematics to English language learners: a case study of Courtney. Mathematics Education Research Journal, 27(1), 103–127. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13394-013-0101-8 Riccomini, P. J., Smith, G. W., Hughes, E. M., & Fries, K. M. (2015). The Language of Mathematics: The Importance of Teaching and Learning Mathematical Vocabulary. Reading & Writing Quarterly, 31(3), 235–252. https://doi.org/10.1080/10573569.2015.1030995 Moschkovich, J. (1999). Supporting the Participation of English Language Learners in Mathematical Discussions. For the Learning of Mathematics, 19(1), 11–19. Zahner, W., Velazquez, G., Moschkovich, J., Vahey, P., & Lara-Meloy, T. (2012). Mathematics teaching practices with technology that support conceptual understanding for Latino/a students. The Journal of Mathematical Behavior, 31(4), 431–446. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmathb.2012.06.002 Turner, E., Dominguez, H., Maldonado, L., & Empson, S. (2013). English Learners’ Participation in Mathematical Discussion: Shifting Positionings and Dynamic Identities. Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, 44(1), 199–234. https://doi.org/10.5951/jresematheduc.44.1.0199
Proposal
As our math classrooms become increasingly linguistically and culturally diverse, teachers must consider the best practices for teaching students who are learning English. Additionally, our English language learners (ELL) are capable of contributing powerful mathematical ideas to our classroom community. How can we create opportunities for our ELLs to be recognized and contribute as mathematical authorities in our classrooms? What type of community do we need to build in our classrooms to support this mathematical agency of our English language learners? How can we explicitly teach the language of mathematics while also covering all of our math curriculum? How can this work benefit ALL of our students? When I began teaching a sheltered Algebra 1 course three years ago, I struggled to address these questions in my practice. The general ELL strategies I had learned were not easily adaptable to the math content I needed to teach, and I struggled to build meaning for my students. What was missing was a sense of community amongst my students and an understanding that everyone had mathematical power in my classroom. Drawing on my experience teaching math in a linguistically diverse high school, current research, and the support of my case study group in my Noyce program, in this session, I will share my successes and challenges in learning to reach and honor my ELLs. Participants should expect this workshop to provide them with practical strategies for how to build community amongst different language peers, implement language worthy tasks, and efficiently teach vocabulary.
