Gersten and Baker’s* review of the research suggests that good bilingual programs do the following:
- Anchor curriculum goals to vocabulary development
- Develop teachers’ awareness and provide them with resources to allow the strategic use of visual aids in their instruction to reinforce learning and retention
- Use small-group cooperative learning and peer tutoring to enhance learning
- Develop the skills of teachers to strategically use students’ native language to reinforce academic content learning
- Use ongoing research as a resource for staff discussion around current and future program practices
Therefore, taking into consideration all that was written above, the topic of this blog entry will focus on the first critical component listed above, that of vocabulary development. Explicitly teaching the mathematics vocabulary before beginning instruction on a new math concept, is an important precursor to any math lesson. Below, you will find a number of different activities designed to help students acquire new vocabulary words.