Practices in multilingual mathematics classrooms : word problems

This is a study in multilingual mathematics classrooms where Swedish is the language of instruction. Our aim is to explore what troubles do appear when students work with mathematical word problems and how teachers provide scaffolding for students’ learning. Classroom observations and student interviews were conducted. The lessons followed the structure of introducing, modelling, jointly practicing and individually performing. Students’ understanding of how to go about in the mathematical word problem genre advanced when they became familiar with the context and worked together by explaining, communicating in pairs and constructing individual word problems