If you’re looking to support your bilingual students with math sentence stems in Spanish and English, you are in the right place!
Math sentence stems (in Spanish and English!) are great bang for your buck because they’re easy to implement, but they provide so much support to your English learners and bilingual students. Even student who are native English speakers may not be familiar with the nuances of polite academic discourse and benefit from the support of math sentence stems.
I recently wrote a post called 6 Ways to Get Students Talking About Math. In that post I pointed to sentence stems as an important tool to helping all students, but especially language learners, articulate their thoughts.
So I’m sharing the math sentence stems in Spanish and English that I use with dual language classes. I like to separate them by use and talk to students about how to select a category.
If you are looking for a ready-to-go version, I do sell posters with math sentence stems in Spanish and English. They come in an English set, a Spanish set, or a bilingual set with both. You can find those by clicking here or by clicking the image below. They also come with the student handouts that you see throughout this post.
Math Sentence Stems in Spanish & English: To explain / Para explicar
- First I… Then I… / Primero yo… Luego yo…
- I noticed that… / Yo noté que…
- I tried… / Yo intenté…
Math Sentence Stems in Spanish & English: To agree or disagree / Estar de acuerdo o en desacuerdo
- I agree/disagree with _____ because… / (No) Estoy de acuerdo con ____ porque…
- My strategy is similar to yours because… / Mi estrategia es similar a la tuya porque…
- My strategy is different from yours because… / Mi estrategia es diferente a la tuya porque…
- The solution does (not) make sense because… / La estrategia (no) tiene sentido porque…
Math Sentence Stems in Spanish & English: To clarify / Para clarificar
- Can you explain…? / ¿Puedes explicar…?
- I have a question about… / Tengo una pregunta sobre…
Math Sentence Stems in Spanish & English: To extend / Para extender
- Another strategy is… / Otra estrategia es…
- I would like to add on to… / Me gustaría agregar a…
How can I use these math sentence stems?
When using sentence stems with students, I start off by providing just one frame. We practice, and I hold them to the standard of answering in a complete sentence.
After getting into that habit, I move on to giving them a choice between 2 sentence frames. They get to choose, but again I still hold them to answering in a complete sentence.
Next I teach them about the different categories. I model how to choose a category and select a sentence frame. From then on, they get to choose a sentence stem to help frame their math discussions.
Give math sentence stems in Spanish and English a try in your class! Message me on Instagram to let me know how it goes.
For even more, try reading How to Teach Math in a Dual Language Classroom.
