Math Talk, Student Discourse, and EL Support

I know you all have had some sessions about getting students to talk during math time.  Well, as a verbal processor myself, I find this a CRITICAL part of math time and all learning in my classroom.  There are definitely times for our classrooms to be 100% silent.  BUT in my opinion, focused student talk is a critical piece to transformational change, especially for our EL students.  I am definitely one of those people that has light bulb experiences while I talk.  It's the same for many of our students. We want our students to be able to share HOW they solve problems and WHY they solve them in the way they do.  We want them to talk through their thinking and reasoning, explain strategies, and prove their answers.

EL students (and really all of our students) benefit from language support during math talk.  Instead of getting caught up in the language, if we provide enough support students can think about math (which is what we want during math time!)

So here are a few things I use in my classroom to provide this support:



1. A math language anchor chart that stays up all year.  These are basic sentence frames that can be applied to almost anything in math.  I refer to this during math tasks, partner work, whole group, and while leading small groups.  After referring to it enough, the students remind each other of it.  I also added one not in the picture:  First I ____, because ____.  Then I ____, because ____. Last I _____, because _____. 





2. An Academic Vocabulary Wall (I have a section for ELA, Science, and Social Studies too).  As I teach new concepts and skills, I add key words that students will need to use in their verbal and written
explanations.  So for example, I'm currently teaching division.  I want students to be able to tell me what number is the whole and why.  So in their explanations, they can refer to the wall and look for the words "total" and "split."  Their answer may sound like: "The whole is 18 because that is the total number of cookies that Jon is splitting up and putting on plates."







3.  Sentence Frames: For key questions that I will be referring to (these are the questions that help me scaffold/break down the skill), I often use sentence starters to help students respond throughout the unit.  This just gives them a starting place with how to explain their thinking.





4. Re-define words: This applies to ALL DAY, EVERY DAY! When I first started teaching EL students, I watered down vocabulary SO MUCH because I wanted them to understand.  Well, that is a HUGE disservice to them.  They are deprived of words and left powerless if they don't learn words at school, because they won't hear them at home if they don't speak English at home.  So after talking to a colleague one day, I got the best vocabulary advice ever! He told me to use the hard words, but just define them.  So in math, this might sound like, "We are going to partition, or split, our circle into quarters, or four equal parts."  So if I was modeling this, I just used "partition" and "quarters" (both words they'll need to know to succeed in math), but I defined the words with simpler words to reinforce the meaning and help them understand.  Throughout the day, I could do the same thing.  I might say, "Wow, I see Juan really being persistent as he is working on this problem. He is not giving up even though it's hard."  Bam. It will change your life. BY THE WAY, THIS HELPS ALL STUDENTS!