4 Strategies to Help English Learners Master New Math Skills
Developing new math skills for students learning English means keeping them on grade level and building on their existing speaking, reading, and writing abilities.
Noonoo draws from the experience of various ESL teachers and authors. From this, he suggests four strategies to support MLs in math so that they can do the same assignments as their English-speaking classmates.
- Read, Read Again, and Discuss – For word problems, teachers can first read the problem as a story without the numbers to understand the situation. Students can work in pairs for the next reading and focus on key words and numbers to discover what the question is asking for. After the final reading, students explain the steps they will follow to solve the problem.
- Build Strong Vocabulary Skills – To support reading above, teachers need to determine what vocabulary students need to understand the problem and provide simple definitions or images. This includes not only math terms, but cultural references and idioms that MLs might be familiar with such as “‘the best deal'”. Word walls and vocabulary games can be used to reinforce math terms.
- Let Students Use Their Home Language First – If two students speak the same language, they might discuss the problem and solve it first in that language, and then explain their solution in English.
- Validate Students’ Existing Knowledge – Students who studied math in their home country are likely to have alternate methods of approaching and solving math problems. If they can refer back to what they already know as a basis for what they are being taught, new concepts will be easier to understand.
Burnett writes that “Math isn’t just about numbers. It’s about language, too.”