Functional Language Awareness in Secondary Mathematics Classrooms

Abstract

This chapter highlights the Functional Language Awareness approach, or FLA, which centers on examining and analyzing how mathematics teachers for Emergent Bilinguals (EBs) attend to and incorporate language into their teaching. The FLA approach puts activity, or what is happening in the classroom, at the core of the model. Activity is surrounded by language functions, features, and contexts that work collaboratively to help teachers think about language as a teaching tool in the mathematics classroom. As a conceptual tool, this approach assists teachers in creating student participation through language in the mathematics classroom. Drawing on discourse from both middle and high school mathematics classrooms, this chapter reveals how teachers of EBs use language within this approach to reach all learners, as well as to promote their participation, interaction, and language use in mathematics class.