Strategies for Math Teachers to Help ELLs Succeed

Abstract

Abstract This capstone project aims to support middle school math teachers and other practitioners who work with English Language Learners. In my school, teachers notice that English Language Learners struggle to get started on most tasks, have a hard time answering word problems and generally do not participate. In this paper, I discuss some of the reasons why general education teachers struggle to successfully teach English Language Learners. My goal is to provide research based ideas and strategies to general education teachers working with ELLs in math classes. I created and will implement a professional development for teachers. It is designed to help teachers with vocabulary acquisition and application, as well as to promote independent work and student participation. In addition, to addressing linguistic and socio-cultural challenges, the PD aims to enhance evaluation and assessment outcomes for ELLs. All teachers can teach English Language Learners but not all are unaware how to teach them in a way that they can learn. I believe that all of these strategies can be used in any classroom. Keywords: ELLs, math, professional development, language, cultural, assessment challenges