Co-designing a multilingual math activity with a caregiver of a multilingual child
At Multi-STEM, we’ve learned a lot about how to form, maintain, and nourish research practice partnerships with parents/caregivers of multilingual children. These learnings have been some of the most valuable learnings from Project: home (see: https://multistem.net/subprojects/home/). One of our most productive collaborations was with a mother of a multilingual child. Researcher Erin Gail MacDonald and the mother worked together for ten months brainstorming, designing, evaluating, and re-designing an activity for multilingual children and their parents/caregivers.
The mother involved in designing and testing this activity with her child completed a series of 12 activities and gave feedback throughout the process. She reported observing the following “gains” for her and her child during the process:
-As time went on, her child was using more words to describe figures. The mother noted that many of the words she used (in her home language) were later used by her child. It seemed to her that her child’s home language vocabulary was growing.
-As time went on, her child was employing similar strategies that she used. She noticed multiple strategies that she had modeled being used by her child in subsequent activities.
-As time went on, the mother reported feeling more confident. Initially, the mother reported not being a “math person” and having some math anxiety. However, as her and her child did activities more often, she reported realizing that she was more capable in helping her child than she realized.
-The mother and child reported enjoying the activities, and looking forward to spending time together while doing the activities. After the study ended, the child and mother got in touch asking for more activities.
Below, you’ll find an exemplar of an activity with directions. The activity can be done with two or more players.
Materials: two challenge grids (attached below), colored pencils.
Goal: the goal of the activity is to reproduce the image given to player 1. Using hints in any helpful language(s), player 1 should describe what they see as precisely as possible for player 2, so that player 2 can re-create the image.
Instructions:
Step 1: Player 1 receives a “challenge”, and must keep it hidden from Player 2. Player 2 receives a “challenge grid”. They do not need to keep this hidden from player 1.
Step 2: Player 1 can begin describing any part of the image. They should describe one figure at a time. They should be as precise as possible, and can use any language(s). For example, think about the position, the color, the size, the shape, and the relationships of different figures to each other.
Step 3: Player 2 listens to Player 1 and can ask clarifying questions using any language(s).
Step 4: Player 1 can answer the questions of Player 2, and modify their descriptions if necessary. Players 1 and 2 continue until Player 1 has finished describing and Player 2 has finished drawing.
Step 5: When finished, Player’s 1 and 2 can reveal their respective images to each other.
Step 6: Talk about it! How are the images different? Similar? What was challenging about this activity? What did each player enjoy about the activity? How did each player use their language(s) to help them?
