Specific Examples of Culturally Responsive Math Lessons (Blog Post 6)

Genius hour question: How can mathematics be used to teach cultural responsiveness?

Hello Everyone,

This post will discuss specific lesson ideas that support culturally responsive mathematics teaching. 

Lesson Ideas:

Adding and Subtracting Fractions - prior to lesson, ask students to bring in their favourite recipe (from home or favourite food). Pick one recipe to focus on for lesson. Have 2 or 3 students share their recipes.

Working with Fractions - ⅔ of the classroom space is reserved for students. Ask them to calculate the amount of space each student has based on the total size of the room, the space they get, and the number of students in the class. Share that it’s recommended that each student has 75-100 square feet of space. In some higher-income areas, students have as much as 200 square feet of space each and in many lower-income, urban areas, students have as little as 10-15 square feet of space each.

Dividing & Multiplying Fractions - Host a pizza party. Dividing ½ by ⅓ could represent a pizza party you plan where each person should get ½ a slice. But, only ⅓ the number of people you thought would show up actually did - so then each person gets ½ / ⅓ = 3/2 slices of pizza.

Negative Numbers & Absolute Value - Ask students to raise their hands if they play video games. Then, ask students to keep their hands raised if they’ve played a video game that has healers. Ask one of the students to explain: What happens to a character’s health when they are attacked? What happens to a character’s health when they are healed? How might you compare how powerful a healer and attacker are?

Pythagorean Theorem - Ask students to think about things they experience at school, on the way to school, or at home that would be more difficult for someone with a physical handicap. Ask them to think about how they might fix those problems. Ask students to share ideas all together or in small groups. While sharing, if a ramp is mentioned, point out this is a common solution we see, and the focus of this lesson will be on designing ramps. If it’s not mentioned, then introduce this as a common problem/solution and the focus of the lesson.

More detailed outlines of the above lesson ideas can be found at https://www.almostfun.org/teachers/templates/

Link HERE

This website was very detailed and I can see myself using this in the future. Follow the link above to see full outlines of additional culturally responsive lessons.