Culturally Relevant Pedagogy refers to strategies that help reach all students across cultures.  A key component of culturally relevant pedagogy is to build inclusiveness among all our learners. 

By building inclusiveness, all students feel respected by and connected to each other.  Additionally, they feel valued by their teachers.  This sense of belonging helps evoke the internal motivation students need to succeed.  Please find a few strategies below to help build inclusiveness in our classrooms. 

Strategies:

1. Use appropriate wait time after asking students questions.
2. Ask new arrivals to point to or circle answers.
3. Plan your questions in advance so that all students, regardless of language ability, are capable of answering at least some of the questions.
4. Create opportunities for cooperative learning.
5. Limit direct instruction to 10-15 minutes at a time.
6. Teach students Talk Moves – or sentence stems designed to help students and teachers feel comfortable with differences of opinions.

Examples of Talk Moves:

1. I would like to add to what ________ said.
2. I agree with _________ because ___________.
3. I disagree with ___________ because _______.
4. What is your evidence?
5. Can you say more about that?
6. I think what you said was _________.  Am I right?