Incorporate Students' Cultural Practices
Overview
When teachers integrate the cultural knowledge students bring to the classroom, they help students draw on their Background Knowledge to better understand and relate to the material.
Example: Use This Strategy In in the Classroom
Design It into Your Product
Use It in the Classroom
Watch how this kindergarten teacher incorporates students’ backgrounds into her lesson. By allowing students to explore their own families while also learning about each others’, she is building a supportive and inclusive classroom community.
Design It into Your Product
See how Toca Life: School incorporates diverse characters into their game. Allowing learners to see themselves reflected in the game is a step towards engaging and integrating their cultural practices.
Learn More
- Explore the Culture & Learning subtopic on Digital Promise's Research Map.
- Explore the Gender, Race, and Ethnic Identity subtopic on Digital Promise's Research Map.
Additional Resources
Additional examples, research, and professional development. These resources are possible representations of this strategy, not endorsements.
Factors Supported by this Strategy
More Teacher Modeling and Support Strategies
Teachers can support language development by using and providing syntax that is appropriately leveled (e.g. short, simple structure for young students).
Teachers support language development by using and providing Vocabulary that is appropriately leveled (e.g. using Word Wall words).
Content that is provided in clear, short chunks helps students develop their Working Memory skills.
Maintaining consistent classroom routines and schedules ensures that students are able to predict what will happen next.
Teaching students how to label, identify, and manage emotions helps them learn self-regulation skills.
Attributing results to controllable aspects (strategy and effort) fosters students' beliefs in self.
Overtly encouraging all students to ask when they have forgotten something creates a classroom that supports risk-taking and skill development.
By talking through their thinking at each step of a process, teachers can model what learning looks like.
Teachers sharing text-to-self, text-to-text, and text-to-world connections models this schema building.
When teachers share their goals and the paths they take to achieve them, they demonstrate that learning involves effort, mistakes, and reflecting.
Talking with students about what they know about the topic of upcoming work helps activate their Background Knowledge or reveals gaps.
Reading aloud regularly exposes students to new and familiar vocabulary and texts.
Reading aloud books about skills children are learning provides another model for their development.
