Engaging in Culturally Relevant Math Tasks: Fostering Hope in the Elementary Classroom

Empower your students as they reimagine the world around them through mathematics

Culturally relevant mathematics teaching engages and empowers students, helping them learn and understand math more deeply and make connections to themselves, their communities, and the world around them. The mathematics task provides opportunities for a direct pathway to this goal; however, how can you find, adapt, and implement math tasks that build powerful learners?

Engaging in Culturally Relevant Math Tasks helps teachers to design and refine inspiring mathematics learning experiences driven by the kind of high-quality and culturally relevant mathematics tasks that connect students to their world. With the goal of inspiring all students to see themselves as doers of mathematics, this book provides intensive, in-the-moment guidance and practical classroom tools that empower educators to shape culturally relevant experiences while systematically building tasks that are standards-based. It includes

• A pathway for moving through the process of asking, imagining, planning, creating, and improving culturally relevant math tasks.
• Tools and strategies for designing culturally relevant math tasks that preservice, novice, and veteran teachers can use to grow their practice day by day.
• Research-based teaching practices seen through the lens of culturally relevant instruction that help students develop deep conceptual understanding, procedural knowledge, fluency, and application in all K-5 mathematical content.

Examples, milestones, opportunities for reflection, and discussion questions guide educators to strengthen their classroom practices, and to reimagine math instruction in response. This book is for any educator who wants to teach mathematics in a more authentic, inclusive, and meaningful way, and it is especially beneficial for teachers whose students are culturally different from them.