ELLISA Mathematics Teaching Practices

•  Model  mathematics discourse patterns such as  recounting, explaining, justifying and making  conjectures.
• Ask students to communicate their ideas and  thinking about mathematics concepts and  reasoning
• Provide students with feedback on their use of  academic language
• Revoice or restate student contributions using  mathematics discourse patterns
• Ask students questions that are intended to  stimulate mathematical thinking and reasoning
• Encourage students to respond directly to each  other’s contributions and ideas
• Ask students to restate, affirm and/or critique  others’ ideas.

• Assign tasks that involve literacy skills (e.g.,  reading, writing, measuring, using instruments  and tools, recording observations, making  tables and charts, interpreting or drawing  diagrams)
•  Explain expectations of literacy tasks and provide clear instruction about how to successfully accomplish the tasks x Provide students with feedback on their use of mathematics literacy practices
• Provide vocabulary instruction on key terms  and concepts
• Use key mathematics terms throughout the  lesson
• Give students opportunities to use key words in writing or talk

Scaffold Language and Content

• Modify talk (e.g., repetition, wait time, proper  enunciation, rate of speech, rephrasing, L1 use)  that facilitates student understanding of  instruction and content
• Pay explicit attention to language issues that  might be confusing or difficult (e.g., multiplemeaning words, figurative language, idioms,  and grammatical structures)
• Provide supports such as sentence frames,  word walls, glossaries, graphic organizers,  outlines, and reading guides
• Utilize visual representations, physical  manipulatives, models and realia
• Use gestures, multimedia resources,   demonstrations and kinesthetic movements

• Anticipate and elicit students’ experiences from home, community or other out­of­school related to the mathematics topic being studied
• Make public students’ prior knowledge and thinking about the mathematics topic
• Connect mathematics topics to local physical, geographic, or ecological environment or conditions
• Link mathematics topics to issues and challenges faced locally, statewide or nationally and/or ones that students have personal experience with
• Engage students in problem and project­based learning tasks and assignments.