Season 2 | Episode 14 – Mathematizing and Modeling The World Around Us - Guest: Erin Turner, Ph.D.

Rounding Up

Season 2 | Episode 14 – Three Resources to Support Multilingual Learners

Guest: Dr. Erin Turner

Mike Wallus: Many resources for supporting multilingual learners are included with curriculum materials. What's too often missing though is clear guidance for how to use them. In this episode, we're going to talk with Dr. Erin Turner about three resources that are often recommended for supporting multilingual learners. We'll unpack the purpose for each resource and offer a vision for how to put them to good use with your students. 

Mike: Well, welcome to the podcast, Erin. We are excited to be chatting with you today. 

Erin Turner: Thank you so much for inviting me. 

Mike: So, for our listeners, the starting point for this episode was a conversation that you and I had not too long ago, and we were talking about the difference between having a set of resources which might come with a curriculum and having a sense of how to use them. And in this case, we were talking about resources designed to support multilingual learners. So, today we're going to talk through three resources that are often recommended for supporting multilingual learners, and we're going to really dig in and try to unpack the purpose and offer a vision for how to put them to use with students. What do you think? Are you ready to get started, Erin? 

Erin: I am. 

Mike: Well, one of the resources that often shows up in curriculum are what are often referred to as sentence frames or sentence stems. So, let's start by talking about what these resources are and what purpose they might serve for multilingual learners. 

Erin: Great. So, a sentence stem, or sometimes it's called a sentence starter, this is a phrase that gives students a starting place for an explanation. So, often it includes three or four words that are the beginning part of a sentence, and it's followed by a blank that students can complete with their own ideas. And a sentence frame is really similar. A sentence frame just typically is a complete sentence that includes one or more blanks that again, students can fill in with their ideas. And in both cases, these resources are most effective for all students who are working on explaining their ideas, when they're flexible and open-ended. So, you always want to ensure that a sentence stem or a sentence frame has multiple possible ways that students could insert their own ideas, their own phrasing, their own solutions to complete the sentence. The goal is always for the sentence frame to be generative and to support students' production and use of language—and never to be constraining. 

Erin: So, students shouldn't feel like there's one word or one answer or one correct or even intended way to complete the frame. It should always feel more open-ended and flexible and generative. For multilingual learners, one of the goals of sentence stems is that the tool puts into place for students some of the grammatical and linguistic structures that can get them started in their talk so that students don't have to worry so much about, “What do I say first?” or “What grammatical structures should I use?” And they can focus more on the content of the idea that they want to communicate. So, the sentence starter is just getting the child talking. It gives them the first three words that they can use to start explaining their idea, and then they can finish using their own insights, their own strategies, their own retellings of a solution, for example. 

Mike: Can you share an example of a sentence frame or a sentence stem to help people understand them if this is new to folks? 

Erin: Absolutely. So, let's say that we're doing number talks with young children, and in this particular number talk, children are adding two-digit numbers. And so, they're describing the different strategies that they might use to do either a mental math addition of two-digit numbers, or perhaps they've done a strategy on paper. You might think about the potential strategies that students would want to explain and think about sentence frames that would mirror or support the language that children might use. So, a frame that includes blanks might be something like, “I broke apart (blank) into (blank) and (blank).” If you think students are using 10s and 1s strategies, where they're decomposing numbers into 10s and 1s. Or if you think students might be working with open number lines and making jumps, you might offer a frame like, “I started at (blank), then I (blank),” which is a really flexible frame and could allow children to describe ways that they counted on on a number line or made jumps of a particular increment or something else. The idea again is for the sentence frame to be as flexible as possible. You can even have more flexible frames that imply a sequence of steps but don't necessarily frame a specific strategy. So, something like, “First I (blank), then I (blank)” or “I got my answer by (blank).” Those can be frames that children can use for all different kinds of operations or work with tools or representations. 

Mike: OK, that sets up my next question. What I think is interesting about what you shared is there might be some created sentence frames or sentence stems that show up with the curricular materials I have, but as an educator, I could actually create my own sentence frames or sentence stems that align with either the strategies that my kids are investigating or would support some of the ideas that I'm trying to draw out in the work that we're doing. Am I making sense of that correctly? 

Erin: Absolutely. So many curricula do include sample sentence frames, and they may support your students. But you can always create your own. And one place that I really like to start is by listening to the language that children are already using in the classroom because you want the sentence starters or the sentence frames to feel familiar to students. And by that, I mean you want them to be able to see their own ideas populating the sentence frames so that they can own the language and start to take it up as part of the repertoire of how they speak and communicate their ideas. So, if you have a practice in your classroom, for example, where children share ideas and maybe on chart paper or on the whiteboard you note down phrases from their explanations—perhaps labeled with their name so that we can keep track of who's sharing which idea—you could look across those notations and just start to notice the language that children are already using to explain their strategies and take that as a starting point for the sentence frames that you create. And that really honors children's contributions. It honors their natural ways of talking, and it makes it more likely that children will take up the frames as a tool or a resource. 

Mike: Again, I just want to say, I'm so glad you mentioned this. In my mind, a sentence frame or a sentence stem was a tool that came to me with my curriculum materials, and I don't know that I understood that I have agency and that I could listen to kids’ thinking and use that to help design my own sentence frames. One question that comes to mind is, do you have any guardrails or cautions in terms of creating them that would either support kids' language or that could inadvertently make it more challenging? 

Erin: So, I'll start with some cautions. One way that I really like to think about sentence frames is that they are resources that we offer children, and I'm using “offer” here really strategically. They're designed to support children's use of language. And when they're not supportive, when children feel like it's harder to use the frame to explain their idea because the way they want to communicate something, the way they want to phrase something doesn't fit into the frame that we've offered, then it's not a useful support. And then it can become a frustrating experience for the child as the child's trying to morph or shape their ideas, which makes sense to them, into a structure that may not make sense. And so, I really think we want to take this idea of offering and not requiring frames really seriously. 

Erin: The other caution that I would offer is that frames are not overly complex. And by that, I mean if we start to construct frames with multiple blanks where it becomes more about trying to figure out the teacher's intention and children are thinking, “What word would I put here? What should I insert into this blank?” Then we've lost the purpose. The purpose is to support generative language and to help children communicate their ideas, not to play guessing games with children where they're trying to figure out what we intend for them to fill in. This isn't necessarily a caution, but maybe just a strategy for thinking about whether or not sentence frames could be productive for students in your classroom— particularly for multilingual learners—is to think about multiple ways that they might complete the sentence stem or that they might fill in the sentence frame. And if as a teacher we can't readily come up with four or five different ways that they could populate that frame, chances are it's too constraining and it's not open-ended enough. 

Erin: And you might want to take a step back toward a more open-ended or flexible frame. Because you want it to be something that the children can readily complete in varied ways using a range of ideas or strategies. So, something that I think can be really powerful about sentence frames is the way that they position students. For example, when we offer frames like, “I discovered that…” or “I knew my answer was reasonable because…” or “A connection I can make is… .” Those are all sentence starters. The language in those sentence starters communicates something really powerful to multilingual learners and to any student in our classroom. And that's that we assume as a teacher that they're capable of making connections, that they're capable of deciding for themselves if their answer is reasonable, that they're capable of making discoveries. So, the verbs we choose in our sentence frames are really important because of how they position children as competent, as mathematical thinkers, as people with mathematical agency. 

Erin: So, sometimes we want to be really purposeful in the language that we choose because of the way that it positions students. Another kind of positioning to think about is that multilingual learners may have questions about things in math class. They may not have clarity about the meaning of a phrase or the meaning of a concept, and that's really true of all students. But we can use sentence frames to normalize those moments of uncertainty or struggle for students. So, at the end of a number talk or at the end of a strategy sharing session, we can offer a sentence frame like, “I had a question about…” or “Something I'm still not sure of is … .” And we can invite children to turn and talk to a partner and to finish that sentence frame.

Erin: That's offering students language to talk about things that they might have questions about, that they might be uncertain about. And it's communicating to all kids that that's an important part of mathematics learning—that everyone has questions. It's not just particular students in the classroom. Everyone has moments of uncertainty. And so, I think it's really important that when we offer these frames to students in our classrooms, they're not positioned as something that some students might need, but they're positioned as tools and resources that all students can benefit from. We all can benefit from an example of a reflection. We all can learn new ways to talk about our ideas. We all can learn new ways to talk about our confusions, and that's not limited to the children that are learning the language of instruction. Otherwise, sentence frames become something that has low status in the classroom or is associated with students [who] might need extra help. And they aren't taken up by children if they're positioned in that way, at least not as effectively. 

Mike: The comparison that comes to mind is the ways that in the past manipulatives have been positioned as something that's lower status, right? If you're using them, it means something. Typically, at least in the past, it was something not good. Whereas I hope as a field we've gotten to the place where we think about manipulatives as a tool for kids to help express their thinking and understand and make meaning, and that we're communicating that in our classrooms as well. So, I'm wondering if you can spend just a few minutes, Erin, talking about how an educator might introduce sentence frames or sentence stems and perhaps a little bit about the types of routines that keep them alive in the classroom. 

Erin: Yes, thanks for this question. One thing that I found to be really flexible is to start with open-ended sentence frames or sentence stems that can be useful as an attachment or as an enhancement to a routine that children already know. So, just as an example, many teachers use an “I notice, I wonder”- or “We know, we wonder”-type of routine. Those naturally lend themselves to sentence starters. “I notice (blank), I wonder (blank).” Similarly, teachers may be already using a same and different routine in their classroom. You can add or layer a sentence frame onto that routine, and then that frame becomes a tool that can support students' communication in that routine. So, “These are the same because… .” “These are different because… .” And once students are comfortable and they're using sentence frames in those sorts of familiar routines, a next step can be introducing sentence frames that allow children to explain their own thinking or their own strategies. 

Erin: And so, we can introduce sentence frames that map onto the strategies that children might use in number talks. We can introduce sentence frames that can support communication around problem-solving strategies. And those can be either really open-ended like, “First…, then I…”-type frames or frames that sort of reflect or represent particular strategies. In every case, it's really important that the teacher introduces the frame or the sentence starter in a whole group. And this can be done in a couple of ways. You can [chorally] read the frame so that all children have a chance to hear what it sounds like to say that frame. And as a teacher, you can model using the frame to describe a particular idea. One thing that I've seen teachers do really effectively is when children are sharing their strategy, teachers often revoice or restate children's strategies sometimes just to amplify it for the rest of the class or to clarify a particular idea. 

Erin: As part of that revoicing, as teachers we can model using a sentence frame to describe the idea. So, we could say something like, “Oh, Julio just told us that he decomposed (blank) into two 10s and three 1s,” and we can reference the sentence frame on the board or in another visible place in the classroom so that children are connecting that mathematical idea to potential language that might help them communicate that idea. And that may or may not benefit Julio, the child [who] just shared. But it can benefit other children in the classroom [who] might have solved the problem or have thought about the problem in a similar way but may not yet be connecting their strategy with possible language to describe their strategy. So, by modeling those connections as a teacher, we can help children see how their own ideas might fit into some of these sentence frames.

Erin: We also can pose sentence frames as tool to practice in a partner conversation. So, for example, if children are turning and talking during a number talk and they're sharing their strategy, we can invite children to practice using one of two sentence frames to explain their ideas to a partner. And after that turn and talk moment, we can have a couple of children in the class volunteer their possible ways to complete the sentence frame for the whole group. So, it just gives us examples of what a sentence frame might sound like in relation to an authentic activity. In this case, explaining our thinking about a number talk. And that sort of partner practice or partner rehearsal is really, really important because it gives children the chance to try out a new frame or a new sentence starter in a really low-stress context, just sharing their idea with one other peer, before they might try that out in a whole-class discussion. 

Mike: That's really helpful, Erin. I think one of the things that jumps out for me is, when you initially started talking about this, you talked about attaching it to a routine that kids already have a sense of like, “I notice” or “I wonder” or “What's the same?” or “What's different?” And what strikes me is that those are routines that all kids participate in. So again, we're not positioning the resource or the tool of the sentence frame or the sentence starter as only for a particular group of children. They actually benefit all kids. It's positioned as a normal practice that makes sense for everybody to take up. 

Erin: Absolutely. And I think we need to position them as ways to enhance things in classrooms for all students. And partner talk is another good example. We often send students off to talk with a partner and give them instructions like, “Go tell your partner how you solve the problem.” And many children aren't quite sure what that conversation looks like or sounds like, even children for whom English is their first language. And so, when we offer sentence frames to guide those interactions, we're offering a support or a potential support for all students. So, for partner talk, we often not only ask kids to explain their thinking, but we say things like, “Oh, and ask your partner questions.” “Find out more about your partner's ideas.” And that can be challenging for 7- and 8-year-olds. So, if we offer sentence frames that are in the form of questions, we can help scaffold those conversations. 

Erin: So, things like, “Can you say more about?” or “I have a question about?” or “How did you know to?” If we want children asking each other questions, we need to often offer them supports or give them tools to support that conversation. And that helps them to learn from each other. It helps them to listen to each other, which we know benefits them in multiple ways. And I just want to share one final example about sentence frames that I think is so powerful. There are really different purposes for frames. They can be about reflection. They can be about asking questions of partners. We can use sentence frames to agree and disagree, to compare and contrast.

Erin: One teacher that I've worked with uses sentence frames to guide end-of-lesson reflections. And after children have talked to a partner or shared ideas with a partner, she asked them to complete sentence frames that sound like this: “One thing I learned from my partner today is (blank).” Or “A new idea I got from my partner today was (blank).” And what I love about this is, it positions all kids as having valuable ideas, valuable contributions to offer the class. And if I'm in a partnership with a multilingual learner, I'm thinking deeply about what I learned from that partner, and I'm sharing with the teacher orally or in writing and sharing with the class what I learned from that child. And so, the sentence frame helps me because it gives me a support to think about that idea and to express that idea, but it really helps elevate other children in the classroom who might not always be seen in that way by their peers. So, I think there are just really powerful ways that, that we can use these tools. 

Mike: I love that. I'm wondering if we can shift now to a different kind of resource, and this one might be a little less obvious. What we were talking about when we had this conversation earlier was the use of a repeated context across a series of lessons and the extent to which that, in itself, can actually be really supportive of multilingual learners. So, I'm wondering if we can talk about an example and share the ways that this might offer support to students? 

Erin: Perfect. So, repeated contexts are wonderful because they offer a rich, really complex space for students to start thinking mathematically, for them to pose questions of their own, and for them to make mathematical observations and solve problems. And the benefit of a repeated context or a context that sort of returns over a sequence of lessons or even across a sequence of units, is that children can start to inhabit the story in the context. They start to learn who the characters are. They learn about the important features of the context, perhaps locations or objects in the context or relationships or key quantities. And every time that that context is reintroduced, the sense-making that they've done previously is a really powerful starting point for the new mathematical ideas that they can explore. And these repeated contexts are especially powerful when they're introduced with multiple supports. So, for multilingual learners, if we can introduce context with narrative stories, with pictures or images, with videos, with physical artifacts, whatever we can do to give children a sense of this, in most cases, imaginary worlds that we're creating, we support their sense-making. 

Erin: And this is really different from curricula or programs that offer a new context with each word problem. Or perhaps with each page in a student book, there's a new context introduced. And for multilingual learners and really for all students, every time we introduce a new context, we have to make sense of what's happening in this story. What's happening in the situation? Who are the people? What does this new word mean that I haven't encountered before? And so, we limit our time to really think deeply about the mathematical ideas because we're repeating this space of sense-making around the context. And in classrooms we often don't have that time to unpack context. And so, what happens when we use new contexts every time is that we tend to fast track the sense-making, and children can start to develop all sorts of unproductive ways to dig into problems like looking for a particular word that they think means a particular operation because we just don't give them the time and space to really make sense of the story. And so, because we have this limited time in classrooms, when we can reintroduce context, it really offers that space to students. 

Mike: Do you have an example that might help illustrate the point? 

Erin: Absolutely. So, in second-grade curriculum that I have reviewed, there's a context around a character, “Jesse and [the] Beanstalk.” It's sort of an adaptation of the classic tale of “Jack and the Beanstalk.” And in this story, Jesse has beans that he gets from an interaction or a sale in a farmers market. And these beans, of course, grow into a giant beanstalk that has a friendly giant that lives at the top. And this beanstalk produces large, giant beans, which have all kinds of seeds inside of them. And this context is used over a series of units. It actually spans most of the school year to give children an opportunity to explore multiple mathematical ideas. So, they make representations of these giant beans with strips of paper, and they use cubes to measure the beans. So, they're looking at linear measurement concepts. They compare the length of different beans, so they're doing addition and subtraction to compare quantities. They find out how many seeds are inside of the beans, and they add those quantities together. So, they're doing all sorts of multi-digit operations, adding the beans.

Erin: And then the context further develops into making bracelets with the seeds that are inside these bean pods, and they group these seeds in groups of 10. So, they have the chance to think about, “How many 10s can we make out of a larger quantity?” Later on, their bracelet-making business expands, and they have to think about how to package these seeds into 100s, 10s, and ones. So, it's a really rich context that develops over time. And children begin to learn about the people in the story, about the activities and the practices that they engage in, and they have the chance to ask their own questions about their story and to make their own connections, which is really powerful. As the story develops, you can see how children develop a sense of curiosity about what's happening, and they become invested in these stories, which really supports the mathematical work. 

Mike: So, I want to walk back to our friend Jesse, and I'm glad to hear it's a friendly giant in this particular case. What you were making me think about as you were talking is the way that we introduce the context probably is really important. Could you shed some light on how you think about introducing a context? 

Erin: So, asking children to share connections that they can make is really important. When we introduce context with different representations, it's really important to ask children to make connections as a place to start. So, we want to ask them what they already know about this context in particular, or similar context. What connections can they make to their own experiences? We want to ask them to share what they wonder about the context, what they're curious about, what they notice, what observations they can make. And when we have different representations like a story and a picture or a video or an artifact, we give children more possibilities for making those kinds of connections. One thing that we can also do to really support children's connections to the context is, as a context develops over time, we can create anchor charts or other written records with children that represent their perspectives on the key features of the context. 

Erin: So, for example, if we go back to “Jesse and the Beanstalk,” after solving a couple of problems about “Jesse and the Beanstalk” and being introduced to that story, we can pause and talk with children about what they see as key aspects of this story. What are things they want to remember? When we come back to Jesse in a few weeks, who are the people [who] we want to remember in this story? What are some important quantities in this story? What are some other important features of this story? And this is not an anchor chart that we create ahead of time as teachers. It's really important that children own these ideas and that they get to start to identify the key quantities, the key features of the situation from their perspective, because then that can become a resource for their thinking later on. We don't have to re-explain the context completely every time. We can refer to these written records that we've co-created with children. 

Mike: Well, let's close by talking about one more resource that educators will often find in their curriculum materials. Things like lists of academic vocabulary, or perhaps even cards with vocabulary words printed on them. I wonder how you think educators should understand the value of these particular resources. 

Erin: These vocabulary cards can take the form of cards that can be inserted into a chart or even anchor charts themselves. And one thing that I think that's really important, especially when we're thinking about using this tool with multilingual learners, is that these include multiple representations of a concept. We always need to make sure that the cards include a picture or a diagram or a visual image of the term, in addition to an example of how the term can be used. So, that might be a phrase, it might be a symbolic representation of the term. It might be a whole sentence that uses the word to give children an idea of how to use the language in context, which is really important. And one thing that I've seen teachers do really effectively is to create large vocabulary cards with blank space, so that as these cards are introduced in the context of a lesson or activity when they would be relevant, children have the opportunity to share their own ideas about the term. 

Erin: And that blank space on the card can be filled with connections that children make. So, children might know that term in another language. That can be added to the vocabulary card. Children might connect that term to another similar idea mathematically or a similar idea in daily life. So, they might know another meaning of the word. That can be added to this blank space so that it becomes a shared and collaboratively generated artifact and not just a static card on the wall of the classroom that is beautiful, but that children may not really use to support their sense-making. So, co-creating these cards with children I've seen to be really powerful, especially if we want them to be used by children and owned by children. And that leaving blank space can help with that. 

Mike: So, you're taking this conversation to a place I hoped we might go, which is just to help paint a picture of what it might look like for a teacher to introduce this resource, but then also sustain it, how to bring it to life in the classroom. What does that look like? Or maybe what does that sound like, Erin? 

Erin: So, I think when vocabulary card is first introduced, just like with many things in math classrooms, we want children to share what they already know. So, what does this word make you think of? Where do you see this word? Where have you heard this word? What are some other things we've done together in our mathematical work that relate to this word? You want children to share versions of the word in other languages. You want them to share real-world context, connections, anything that they can to connect to their experiences. And it's important that we introduce small sets of words at a time. So, if we're working on a unit on multiplication, we might have words related to “factor” and “multiple” and “products” that become additions to our word wall or to our anchor charts. And that we encourage children to use those words in particular activities in those units. 

Erin: So, for example, if we're doing a number talk as part of a unit on multiplication, we might remind children of particular words that have been introduced in prior lessons and encourage them to try to take up those words in their explanations. “See if you can use the word ‘factor’ today as you're sharing your strategy with a partner.” “See if you can use the word ‘product’ today.” And then invite children to share examples of what that sounded like in their partner talk. Or what that looked like when they were writing about their explanation. And it's these constant invitations or repeated invitations that really make these words come to life in classrooms so that they don't just live on the wall. It's also really important that these words are highly visible and accessible for students. So, oftentimes teachers will display key vocabulary words alongside a whiteboard or underneath a whiteboard. Or children might have their own copy of a small set of keywords that they're working on to paste inside of their notebooks. If they're not highly accessible, it really limits children's opportunities to use them on a regular basis. 

Erin: So, another way to introduce new vocabulary terms or to support students to use them in context is to connect specific words to a routine that is already in place in your classroom. So, one of my favorites for its potential to help kids use new vocabulary is a routine like, “Which One Doesn't Belong?” But same and different routines that many teachers use also work great for this reason. So, just as an example, if we're doing a “Which One Doesn't Belong?” routine, and the four images that we're using are geometric shapes, we might be able to come up with a list of vocabulary words that would help children describe their decisions about which of the shapes doesn't belong. And we could locate those words alongside our whiteboard or in a visible place in the classroom and just invite children as you're deciding which shape doesn't belong, as you're thinking about how you're going to explain your decision to your partner, think about how you could use some of these words. So, we could have words that describe different kinds of angles or other properties of shapes depending on what we're working on in the curriculum. But that's a way to show children the relevance of particular terms in a routine that they're familiar with and that they're engaged in in the classroom. And that's a way to keep these terms alive. 

Mike: That's the thing that I really appreciate about what you just shared, Erin. If I'm autobiographical and I think back to my own practice, I recognize the value, and I aspired for these things to be useful. What you did just now is help paint a picture of what it looks like, not just to introduce the language or support the language, but also to keep these alive in classroom practice. I did have a question that occurred to me. Similar to sentence frames and sentence stems, is there any kind of caution that you would offer when people think about using these? 

Erin: Definitely. For me, the most important caution is to not overemphasize formal mathematical vocabulary in classrooms, particularly for multilingual learners. Obviously, we want children to be developing mathematical language, and that's something we want for all children. But if we overemphasize the use of formal terminology, that can constrain communication for students who are developing the language. And we never want students' lack of familiarity or their lack of comfort with a particular vocabulary term to stop their communication or to hinder their communication. We would much rather have children explaining their ideas using all sorts of informal language and gestures and reference to physical models. The important thing is the idea and that children have the opportunity to communicate those ideas. And this formal mathematical language that might be represented in vocabulary cards or on anchor charts will come. It's part of the process, but they most importantly need opportunities to communicate their ideas. 

Mike: Well, this has been a really enlightening conversation, Erin, and I'm wondering if before we go, if you have any particular recommendations for educators who are looking to build on what they heard today and continue to take up new ideas of how to support their multilingual learners? 

Erin: There's a wonderful set of resources out of the Understanding Language Project at Stanford University, and they have a number of math language routines designed to support multilingual students. Some of them are related to introducing context, which we talked about today. They have a version of a “Three Reads” routine for introducing new contexts that people might find useful. But there's a whole collection of language routines on their website that teachers might find really useful. I always go to TODOS as one of my most meaningful resources for thinking deeply and critically about supporting multilingual learners. 

Erin: So, I think that site and all of the books and the journals and the conferences that they develop should definitely be included. And many of the other colleagues that you've had on the podcast have wonderful resources to share, too. So, I think I would start with those two. 

Mike: Well, thank you so much for joining us, Erin. It really has been a pleasure talking with you. 

Erin: Oh, it's been a pleasure. Thank you again for inviting me. 

Mike: This podcast is brought to you by The Math Learning Center and the Maier Math Foundation, dedicated to inspiring and enabling all individuals to discover and develop their mathematical confidence and ability.

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