- Empowering students to share thoughts
- Integrating diverse work and study practices
- Understanding student learning needs and styles
- Emulating culturally-significant instruction styles, such asoral storytelling
Conditions for Creating a Culturally-Responsive Classroom
- Establish Inclusion -- This starts by highlighting how the topic you’re teaching may relate or apply to students. For example, many societies and cultures have fireworks festivals. While such a festival runs, you could teach how to calculate speed using fireworks in sample questions. Establishing inclusion also involves regularly grouping students with different classmates, encouraging discussion to solve problems. In doing so, they can share unique perspectives.
- Develop Positive Attitudes -- This further focuses on relating content to students. A popular method is allowing them to choose between activities and assessments that let them showcase their values, strengths and experiences. For example, while providing clear learning goals and evaluation criteria, encourage students to submit their own project ideas.
- Enhance Meaning -- You can bolster lesson content by drawing connections with real-world issues, asking students to use opinions and existing knowledge to address them. For example, when teaching about government, you could contextualize concepts through municipal political issues. When appropriate, use student jargon to clarify these issues or improve communication in general.
- Foster Confidence -- Make the assessment process less intimidating by offering different ways to demonstrate skills and understanding. For example, avoid handing out quizzes that are purely multiple choice or fill-in-the-blank. Among other question types, mix in problems that involve writing short- and long-form answers. After, give students time to assess their own progress and performance, helping them focus on growth.
15 Culturally-Responsive Teaching Strategies and Examples
1. Learn About Your Students
- Distributing questionnaires, asking about interests
- Handing out surveys, gathering information about learning styles
- Holding open discussions, allowing students to talk about positive experiences from past classes
2. Interview Students
You’ll build a stronger understanding of students’ values and habits -- as well as strengths and weaknesses -- by individually asking them questions. While running a large-group exercise, pull each student aside for a few minutes. Ask about:- Hobbies
- Their favourite lessons and activities
- Which kinds of exercises help them remember lessons and improve skills
3. Integrate Relevant Word Problems
- Including student names to make subject matter relatable
- Linking to student interests, such as by measuring the shot distance of a famous soccer player
- Referencing diverse cultures, such as by determining the diameter of a specific ethnic food platter
4. Present New Concepts by Using Student Vocabulary
Delivering relatable content goes beyond math class. In any subject, you can grab and keep student attention by using their vocabulary to build understanding before moving to academic diction. Let’s say many of your students are sports fans with family from soccer-crazed nations. Use a soccer example to demonstrate metaphors in language arts class:Andrea Pirlo is an eagle on the pitch, armed with vision sharp enough to detect the smallest openings and recognize opportunities his opposition can’t.
This kind of culturally-responsive language should open the door to presenting challenging skills and concepts, engaging students while doing so.5. Bring in Guest Speakers
6. Deliver Different Forms of Content through Learning Stations
Whether due to culture, socialization, preference or learning needs, students respond differently to different types of content. You can provide a range of material to each student by setting up learning stations. Each station should use a unique method of teaching a skill or concept related to your lesson. For example, students can rotate between stations that involve:- Playing a game
- Creating artwork
- Watching a video
- Reading an article
- Completing puzzles
- Listening to you teach
7. Gamify Lessons
- Offering rewards, such as badges, for completing specific tasks or achieving certain scores
- Setting a clearlearning goalfor the lesson, charting progress throughout the class to motivate students
- Creating an "instruction manual" for a project, which contains the rubric and best practices for earning a high grade
8. Call on Each Student
Call-and-response -- the practice of asking students frequent questions while giving lessons -- usually keeps them engaged, but also enables them to share thoughts and opinions. Involve everyone by:- Encouraging the sharing of personal perspectives, when a question allows for it
- Calling on students without their hands up, acclimatizing them to speaking amongst peers
- Asking a question after each new point or thought, having a student teach back the concept you just spoke about
9. Use Media that Positively Depict a Range of Cultures
10. Offer Different Types of Free Study Time
Free study time typically appeals to students who prefer solo learning, but many cultures prioritize learning in group settings. You can meet both preferences by dividing your class into clearly-sectioned team and individual activities, such as the following:- Provide audiobooks, which play material relevant to your lessons
- Create a station for group games that teach curriculum-aligned skills
- Keep a dedicated quiet space for students to take notes and complete work
- Allow some students to work in groups while taking notes and completing work, away from the dedicated quiet space
11. Encourage Students to Propose Ideas for Projects
12. Experiment with Peer Teaching
There’ll almost always be some student vocabulary and communal practices you never pick up on. But you can fill these gaps through peer teaching. Relatively-simple exercises include:- Jigsaw activities
- Reading buddy sessions
- Using educational software in pairs
13. Establish Cooperative Base Groups
- Review lessons
- Take on guided research
- Address each other’s questions
- Complete in-class assessments
14. Run Problem-Based Learning Scenarios
The flexibility of problem-based learning lends itself to culturally-responsive teaching. This is because, when presenting a relatable real-world problem for your students to solve, two cultural connections will typically occur. First, there will likely be a cultural link in the question, whether it’s explicit or students make it themselves. Second, because they can apply different approaches to solve the question, they may use unique cultural perspectives. But if you want to create a scenario with explicit cultural ties, consider:- Encouraging students to take historical, sociological and anthropological viewpoints
- Framing the problem using ethnic events -- for instance, solving logistical challenges of running a heritage festival -- in the area
15. Involve Parents by Using Take-Home Letters
Downloadable List of Culturally-Responsive Teaching Strategies and Examples
Click here to download and print a simplified list of the 15 culturally-responsive teaching strategies and examples to keep at your desk.Interested in other teaching strategies to deploy in your classroom?
Culturally-responsive teaching strategies overlap in important ways with many other pedagogical approaches. Consider researching other teaching strategies to help bolster your approach, or combine different elements of each strategy!- Active learning strategiesempower, engage, and stimulate your students as theyput them at the center of the learning process.
- In contrast to traditional learning activities,experiential learningactivitiesaimto develop knowledge and skills through direct, firsthand experience.
- Project-based learninginvolves an open-ended approach that sees students workalone or collectivelytowork on an engaging, intricate curriculum-related questions or challengse.
- Inquiry-based learningis broken down into four categories,all of whichemphasize student questions, ideas and analyses.
- Adaptivelearningfocuses on changing -- or "adapting" -- content for each student on an individual basis, especially with the help of technology.
Final Thoughts about Culturally-Relevant Pedagogy
Delivering culturally-responsive lessons can not only help you engage students, but allow them to make personal connections with content. Greater student investment should lead to other benefits, such as more rigor and motivation. A happier, focused classroom is the ideal outcome.>>Create or log in to your teacher account on Prodigy -- a free game-based learning platform that delivers a range of culturally-relevant math content through engaging word and scenario-based problems. Aligned with curricula across the English-speaking world, it’s loved by more than 700,000 teachers and 20 million studentsFAQs
What does culturally responsive teaching look like in the classroom? ›
Cultural responsiveness is the ability to learn from and relate respectfully with people of one's own culture as well as those from other cultures. Culturally responsive schools offer a learning environment where every student's cultures, languages, and life experiences are acknowledged, validated, and celebrated.
What is a culturally responsive lesson plan? ›Matthew Lynch (2011) culturally responsive instruction is, “a student-centered approach to teaching in which the students' unique cultural strengths are identified and nurtured to promote student achievement and a sense of well-being about the student's cultural place in the world.” There are several components to a ...
What are the 7 principles of culturally responsive teaching? ›- Activate students' prior knowledge. ...
- Make learning contextual. ...
- Consider your classroom setup. ...
- Form relationships. ...
- Discuss social and political issues. ...
- Tap into students' cultural capital. ...
- Incorporate popular culture.
Culturally-responsive practices involve recognizing and incorporating the assets and strengths all students bring into the classroom, and ensuring that learning experiences, from curriculum through assessment, are relevant to all students.
What are the four areas of culturally responsive teaching? ›The Culturally Responsive-Sustaining (CR-S) Framework outlines four principles and embedded strategies to help educators create student-centered learning environments that: affirm racial, linguistic and cultural identities; prepare students for rigorous and independent learning; develop students' abilities to connect ...
What are the 6 stages of cultural competence? ›The Cross framework emphasizes that the process of achieving cultural competency occurs along a continuum and sets forth six stages including: 1) cultural destructiveness, 2) cultural incapacity, 3) cultural blindness, 4) cultural pre-competence, 5) cultural competency and 6) cultural proficiency.
What two or three strategies can you use to develop cultural competence? ›- Learn about yourself. Get started by exploring your own historical roots, beliefs and values, says Robert C. ...
- Learn about different cultures. ...
- Interact with diverse groups. ...
- Attend diversity-focused conferences. ...
- Lobby your department.
- Learn your students' names and learn to pronounce them. ...
- Set aside time for relationship housekeeping. ...
- Have one-on-one conversations, discussions, and informal meetings with students. ...
- Connect with parents. ...
- See yourself as the students see you. ...
- Know your content.
Culturally and Linguistically Responsive Teaching leverages and utilizes the cultural learning tools that students bring to the classroom. Culturally Responsive Teaching is an approach that leverages the strengths that students of color bring to the classroom to make learning more relevant and effective.
How do you teach culture in the classroom? ›- Express interest in the ethnic background of your students. ...
- Redirect your role in the classroom from instructor to facilitator. ...
- Maintain a strict level of sensitivity to language concerns. ...
- Maintain high expectations for student performance.
Why do we need culturally responsive teaching? ›
Since CRT focuses on inclusive curriculums, it helps teachers and students understand different perspectives, appreciate each other's strengths, and build empathy. It also helps teachers to introspect how their own identity and experiences impact their attitudes and teaching practices.
What are culturally responsive resources? ›Culturally responsive teaching (CRT) connects instruction with students' life experiences, cultures, and languages to support their learning. CRT can help narrow racial and income-level disparities in academic achievement resulting from social, cultural, and institutional barriers.
What are the teaching strategies used in teaching mother tongue? ›- Listening.
- Repetition.
- Step by Step Mastery.
- Memory.
- Parental Involvement.
- Know cultural needs. ...
- Don't expect them to underperform. ...
- Relate examples to their environment and community. ...
- Help them fake power to become powerful. ...
- Consider intergenerational trauma. ...
- Be aware of a greater sense of autonomy. ...
- Include community spirit. ...
- Remember English is a foreign language.
These four practices are: (1) that teachers are empathetic and caring, (2) that they are reflective about their beliefs about people from other cultures, (3) that they are reflective about their own cultural frames of reference, and (4) that they are knowledgeable about other cultures.
What is the core of culturally responsive teaching? ›Culturally and Linguistically Responsive Teaching leverages and utilizes the cultural learning tools that students bring to the classroom. Culturally Responsive Teaching is an approach that leverages the strengths that students of color bring to the classroom to make learning more relevant and effective.