The paper focuses on the issue of growing cultural and linguistic heterogeneity of mathematics classrooms, which means new demands and challenges of the mathematics teacher. Without any doubt teachers need help and support to learn to face this new situation at schools.
As research shows, one of the areas where teachers ask for help is the area of teaching materials that would support all learners in the classrooms regardless of their cultural background. The paper proposes three pillars that must be taken into account when developing teaching materials and units and which have been tested in development of materials for lower secondary school mathematics classrooms.
It looks for whether these pillars are appropriate for primary school level and presents an example of a teaching unit built on all these three pillars showing that it is possible to make primary mathematics lessons meaningful for all as well as cross-curricular.