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Abstract: A teacher in an urban school designed culturally and linguistically relevant lessons on measurement by utilizing students' timelines on evening activities. The lessons opened up multi-layered learning. Students learned about measurement, language, and also about their classmates. The lessons also facilitated English Language Learners' participation in mathematics lessons.
Teaching in Linguistically Diverse Classrooms
Many schools in North America are becoming linguistically diverse. In Canada, 17.5 percent of the total population (5.8 million people) reported speaking at least two languages at home (Statistics Canada, 2011). In the United States, 21 percent of households reported using languages other than English (United States Census Bureau, 2013). With a vision of providing high-quality mathematics instruction to all the learners, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (2014) states: "Our vision of access and equity requires being responsive to students' backgrounds, experiences, and knowledge when designing, implementing, and assessing the effectiveness of a mathematics program" (p. 60). Culturally relevant pedagogy is a pedagogical approach, where cultural practices of students' community and home are meaningfully embedded in mathematics learning (e.g., Leonard & Guha, 2002; Torres-Velasquez & Lobo, 2004). Under Ontario's Equity and Inclusive Education Strategy (2009), culturally relevant pedagogy has been embraced in Ontario to set high academic expectations for all learners (Litearcy and Numeracy Secretariat, 2013).
The lessons we introduce here stem from a teacher's efforts to make mathematics curriculum culturally relevant in one of the most linguistically diverse schools in an urban city of Canada. The lessons were also guided by the idea of identity texts. The term identity texts is defined as "the products of students' creative work or performances carried out within the pedagogical space orchestrated by the classroom teacher. (...) The identity texts then hold a mirror up to students in which their identities are reflected back in a positive light" (Cummins & Early, 2011, p. 3). This idea of identity texts has been used to enrich classroom practices, especially for students whose identities tend to be historically undervalued.
Like many classrooms in urban cities in North America, the classroom we introduce here is linguistically and ethnically diverse. In this Grade 5 classroom, the majority of students were English Language Learners (ELLs), either the children of immigrant families, whose home language was not...