15 Culturally-Responsive Teaching Strategies and Examples + Downloadable List
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- Empowering students to share thoughts
- Integrating diverse work and study practices
- Understanding student learning needs and styles
- Emulating culturally-significant instruction styles, such as oral 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 clear learning goal for 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 strategies empower, engage, and stimulate your students as they put them at the center of the learning process.
- In contrast to traditional learning activities, experiential learning activities aim to develop knowledge and skills through direct, firsthand experience.
- Project-based learning involves an open-ended approach that sees students work alone or collectively to work on an engaging, intricate curriculum-related questions or challengse.
- Inquiry-based learning is broken down into four categories, all of which emphasize student questions, ideas and analyses.
- Adaptive learning focuses on changing -- or "adapting" -- content for each student on an individual basis, especially with the help of technology.