Guest Speaker: Megan from Cali
First off, I apologize if the guest speakers name was not Megan, but I recall that’s what Chelsea called her. What I found interesting about the school that she worked at was that there was no ELL -specific math course, even though they had ELL-specific courses for the rest of the ‘core’ subjects. Did the big boss in charge decide that math was far enough removed from English with its numbers that most students can do reasonably well?
I’m not sure where I stand on this issue; on one hand, I agree that it could be possible to at least pass math with minimal English understanding because one can be familiar with numbers, symbols and pictures, but on the other, all explanations and word problems are in English. Many students do not have the ability to learn through just symbols and numbers, and need a teacher, or some source to connect mathematical ideas using explanations English. Word problems are also considered the more advanced type of question found in assessments, and are often worth more points on a test than its basic numerical counterpart.
Now it seems that the majority of ELLs in my placement school are from East Asia, where they spend more time on math per week than North American students. Their mathematical skills are often very good, sometimes a few grades above their registered course, but they often lose marks where it matters: the word problems.
So I think English may be just as much a barrier to learning and expressing knowledge in math as it would be in any other discipline, and it would make just as much sense to have an ELL-specific math curriculum if there are already ELL-specific courses for other subjects.