Full course description
This course is designed for English language teachers who want to deepen their own conceptual understanding of ratios and proportions and learn strategies for helping ESOL students build ratio reasoning skills. No prior math background is needed, however having taken the course Getting Started with Integrating Math in the ESOL Classroom is recommended.
This asynchronous course is divided into five core lessons on ratios and proportions. Each lesson contains math practice activities, and lesson ideas for adult ESOL classes. The intention is to identify where, when, and how it makes sense to include ratio reasoning in ESOL lessons while continuing to focus on language acquisition and effective communication.
The five core lessons are:
- Introduction to Ratios and Proportions
- Finding Patterns in Ratios and Proportions
- Looking Deeper
- Different Ways to Say It
- Strategies for the Multilevel Classroom
- an introduction to the topic and a look at the conceptual underpinnings related to the math
- opportunities to try out the new concepts
- development of vocabulary as it relates to math topics
- contextual application
- strategies for bringing the topic into ESOL
- a list of resources for teachers for further exploration of related math topics
You will have 4 weeks to complete the course. The estimated time to complete course is about 6 hours, depending on your pace and style of learning.
Learning Objectives
Upon completion of this professional development course, you will be able to:
- Identify contexts that involve ratios and proportions that would make sense in an ESOL classroom, and use them in creating activities/lessons.
- Explain what a ratio is and is not, and whether ratio reasoning is appropriate in a situation.
- Connect different types of mathematical comparisons to language structures.
- Explore the different multiplicative relationships in a proportion.
- Use concrete strategies to help students reason about ratios.
- Identify different ways of expressing ratios and explain how these can be used to persuade.
- Differentiate activities with open-ended math questions for ESOL learners.