Columbia College Chicago in collaboration with the Chicago Public School District #299 and the Summit School District #104
with funding from the Illinois Board of Higher Education
Improving Teacher Quality Grants
2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008
Using Instruction in ESL and the Arts to Expand Access to Mathematics
The project’s primary aim is to prepare teachers to adapt standards-based mathematics instruction to meet the linguistic needs and enhance the linguistic strengths of students enrolled in bilingual or English-as-a-new-language (ENL) programs. Adaptation of mathematics instruction for ENL students is in the very early stages of development; our project is unique in that it adds the dimension of the arts to lessons learned about effective mathematics and bilingual instruction. With our instructional model we aim to not only increase student learning in mathematics, but also to build teaching capacity that can be sustained in a variety of school districts. Current national as well as individual state efforts to improve K-12 mathematics education are founded on the conviction that all students deserve a rich mathematics program (National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, 1989, 2000). This includes students who are in the process of learning English as a second or new language. Central to rich mathematics programs are the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) standards emphasizing problem solving, reasoning and proof, communication skills, the ability to make connections, and the ability to represent mathematical concepts. Acquisition and application of such skills present challenges to all students, but even more so to second language learners, especially when the demand is for them to demonstrate their use of such skills in a new language.
The number of English language learners (ELL’s) in our schools continues to grow significantly. Statistics from the National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition (NCELA) indicate a 95% increase in the enrollment numbers of ELL’s in school systems across the country from 1991/92 to 2001/02. Numerically, this increase represents more than 4.7 million English language learners in K-12 classrooms (NCELA, 2006a). The Chicago Public Schools alone reported that in 2004 there were approximately 60,000 such students, representing almost 20 different languages. Most were in elementary schools.
To address the kind of learning from which ELL’s can benefit significantly, our project integrates mathematics with the study of English-as-a-new-language and with the arts. We have found that the same rich contexts and strategies that are used to develop mathematical concepts in a standards-based curriculum are also useful for developing second language proficiency. And, the interactional nature of the arts, where learning emerges from doing or making the art form, dovetails with both research-based approaches used for second language learning, which advocate providing children with “real communication about interesting, relevant subject matter in low-anxiety environments” (Richard-Amato, 1996, p.378) and those used in standards-based mathematics curricula, which demand that students do mathematics (Van de Walle, 2004). Recent studies in public schools support the use of the arts to further learning in other subject areas. Catterall, Chapleau, and Iwanaga (1999) and Burton, Horowitz, and Abeles (1999) have documented that student engagement in the arts also contributes significantly to student performance and dispositions towards mathematical learning. Burton et al. document that teachers of subject areas such as mathematics and science were impressed by their students’ “abilities [for] thinking creatively and flexibly, imagining ideas and problems from different perspectives, taking imaginative leaps, and layering one thought upon another as part of a process of problem solving” (in Fiske, 2000, p. 36). The teachers attributed these abilities and disposition to their students’ involvement with the arts. The teachers also noted that the students were “curious, able to express ideas and feelings in individual ways, and [were] not afraid to display their learning before their teachers, peers, and parents” (ibid.). Such confidence is important both for developing assurance in use of a second language and for problem solving.
Our innovative, easily replicable model integrates approaches previously used for different, limited purposes into a single vehicle targeting a rapidly growing student population whose learning needs have yet to be adequately addressed. Our primary goal has been to provide teachers with the knowledge, strategies, tools, and materials that can be used to help their language minority students succeed academically, because they will be able to access the kind of mathematics learning linked to such success.
Many of the approaches and materials used in this project were first tested and refined over three summers (1998 – 2000) in programs jointly sponsored by the Teaching Integrated Math and Science (TIMS) Project at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the Chicago Public Schools’ Office of Language and Cultural Education. Since 2004, this project has been sponsored by Columbia College Chicago in collaboration with the Chicago Public Schools CPS, building on and extending lessons learned from the implementation of that project during the first three summers. Beginning in 2007, the project has also been sponsored by Summit School District #104 Changes over the life of the project have included the addition of more time and content in both mathematics and English-as-a-new-language to the professional development sessions for the teachers. The arts were added as vehicles for teaching both mathematics and ENL. And, the Japanese Lesson Study model was added to promote implementation of the ideas and activities presented during the professional development sessions.
