Sources of meaning and meaning-making practices in a Canadian French-immersion mathematics classroom

Research on the learning and teaching of mathematics in the context of language diversity has highlighted how students make use of many different features of language in mathematical meaning-making, such as gestures, code-switching, genres or narratives. I refer to these features as sources of meaning, to highlight their fluid, dialogic nature. Each student has a unique repertoire of sources of meaning, on which they draw in mathematical meaning-making. I argue that to understand the mathematical meaning-making process, we need to attend to the meaning-making practices they use as they draw on these repertoires during classroom interaction. I illustrate and reflect on these ideas with an episode from an elementary school French-immersion mathematics classroom in Canada.