H2- Honor Student Access to Content Material
Teacher-candidates use multiple instructional strategies, including the principles of second language acquisition, to address student academic language ability levels and cultural and linguistic backgrounds.
As a teacher, I use differentiated instructional strategies to target students’ different learning styles. I am also conscious of my academic language when presenting new vocabulary. In introducing new vocabulary, I used the principles of second language acquisition as a guide so as to meet students at different readiness levels.
For the last week we have been working through the algebraic concept of functions. To many of my students, this is a brand new concept. There are many different terms of vocabulary associated with functions and thus care was needed in teaching students this material. First, I had all student copy definitions into their math journals and phrase them in their own words. With each new day, we reviewed these terms through conversation and applied their meanings to new content and perspectives. In this way, I implemented the first of Barcroft’s Five Principles of Effective Second Language Vocabulary Instruction: Present new words frequently and repeatedly in input.
To differentiate the instruction by learning style, I used several different methods of instruction. One of the latest lessons I did consisted of students playing Functions Bingo! A few days ago we had a half day of school and as I was discussing the upcoming day with one of my students and suggesting we play a math game, he offered that we play bingo. As I thought about it, I found that bingo could easily be adapted to be an effective kinesthetic and visual way of reviewing input/output vocabulary associated with functions.
Bingo Functions 3by3 Bingo board
I gave each student the same bingo board (conventionally, in bingo, each person has a different board) and a different function (of the form: f(x)=3+x ). Students were given colored chips to place on their boards. In the front of the room, I had two dice: one red for negative numbers and one green for positive numbers. When I rolled both dice on the document camera, students were asked to determine the sum of the numbers and use the sum as the input of their functions. For example, if I rolled -1 and 3 students needed to determine the sum to be 2 and use it as the value of in their function f(2)= … if the output of the function, given the specific input, was on their board, they could place a chip on that space. Once one student got a bingo, (three in a row/column/diagonal) I had all students dump their chips of their board and start again with a new function. The first student(s) to get three bingos won candy.
In this way, students were evaluating many functions at different input values through the context of a competitive, kinesthetic and visually stimulating activity. Additionally, with each dice roll, I used the words “Use this input and determine your function’s output, if you put this in, what comes out?” Thus, I frequently used functional vocabulary throughout the game.
Through the game of functions bingo, I have been able to introduce the concept of functions using multiple instructional strategies to meet students of different learning profiles and readiness levels. In the use of a verbal and collaborative game, I have also implemented principles of second language acquisition to address student language ability levels.