Breaking the Language Barrier in Mathematics
Tobey
Bassoff
Marilyn
Burns is arguably the leading expert in providing professional
development for teachers in the area of mathematics. In the
Winter 2005 edition of Leadership Compass, a publication from
the National Association of Elementary School Principals, she
wrote an article called “Building a Teaching Bridge from
Reading to Math. ” Burns is convinced that one of greatest
hurdles at the elementary school level is a teacher’s
content knowledge. (Marilyn Burns, "Building a Teaching
Bridge from Reading to Math." Leadership Compass.
Winter 2005.)
In her experience,
teachers approach math with a mixture of fear for the subject,
lack of confidence, and general discomfort. However, when instructing
in literacy they are usually not only comfortable with the subject
matter, but also excited. Burns believes that the trick is to
get teachers to apply what they know and love about teaching
literacy to improve their teaching of math.
In comparing
Burns’ article to a January 2005 article entitled “Teacher
Skills to Support English Language Learners,”(Deborah
Short and Jana Echevarria. “Teachers Skills to Support
English Language Learners.” Educational Leadership (December2004/January 2005) pp.8-13.), it becomes clear
that there is a link between the two. Deborah Short and Jana
Echevarria (January 2005) note that when English Language Learners
struggle with schoolwork it may be attributed to their lack
of background knowledge rather than to intellectual ability.
Could the same hold true for math? If students haven’t
been exposed to certain ways of solving problems or math problems
that are embedded in words, then they are at a disadvantage;
not from what they aren’t capable of, but from what they
have yet to be exposed.
Also, our
ELL students are struggling to catch-up in so many ways. Many
of them are becoming acclimated to a new culture, a new language,
new rules for socially acceptable behavior, etc. Now toss in
a “new” way of doing math. It would be surprising
if they didn’t struggle a bit. If we could help them by
applying what we as teachers know and love about teaching reading
strategies to the strategies we use to teach math, then Marilyn
Burns and I agree that students would learn more easily. We
want students to develop a love of numbers, be fluent with numbers,
comprehend numbers, and have strategies for understanding complex
problems involving mathematical concepts. Many of the reading
strategies we teach students, like using schema, context clues,
and word attack skills could apply to their understanding of
math problems.
My best
hope for you is that the next time you think about teaching
math to ELLs, try linking reading strategies to math. You might
be pleasantly surprised by the results. If you have a story
or comment to share, please email me at tbassoff@yahoo.com |