Methods & strategies

to teach
Social Studies & Science

Unit 3
Academic Language Development in Science for ELL

Topic 4
The implementation of the Approaches

MGS. VIVIANA OROZCO JURADO

 Subtheme 1: Planning activities

Subthemes
Subtheme 2: Assessment Features

Subtheme 3: Classroom-based
Assessment
Subtheme 4: Assessing ELL within
Inquiry-Based Science
Objective
Formulate assessment activities through the analysis of
practical examples of science exercises make applying theory
to practice when teaching science to ELLs.
 Warm up
Underline the input and out capacities ELL have, according to the following language
levels:
Planning activities

Activating Mediating
Language Through Language Through
Engage Explore

Academic
Explicit Language
Language
Instruction
Performance
Through Explain
Through Extend
 Planning activities
Strategies for ELL Instruction During Engage

Inquiry Charts

Natural Language - Opportunities to generate prior

knowledge Explore the targeted
science concepts.
- The use of known academic
K-W-L Charts
language with exposure to new
language.
- Freely use their natural language
to explore science.
Whip-Around
Activating Language Through Engage
Tips for Planning Engage for ELLs
• Be sure that you know the English-proficiency level designations of your ELL.
• Make sure that students are grouped—either heterogeneously or homogeneously, depending on the
situation—in small enough numbers to ensure comfort and the opportunity to be heard and to listen to
one another’s ideas.
• Carefully study the science curriculum and standards for the grade level.
• Consider how to capture the scientific concepts for the unit in the school environment or the broader
community (accessed by field trips).
• Identify the ELL demands and opportunities: Think about the academic language you want your
students to practice and acquire by the end of the inquiry cycle. Identify and plan how you will model
the targeted language in your interactions with students. Select supplementary materials and strategies
that will be appropriate for their level of proficiency.
• Create a learning environment that grabs your students’ attention and invites conversation. Gather
real photos that depict the concept. Rummage through your science kits, old textbooks, and the
Internet. Set up your materials around tables, in corners, or on the rug so that they are accessible to
clusters of students.
Mediating Language Through Explore
Planning activities
During Explore, teachers give students an opportunity to investigate through
experiments, observations, and shared inquiry, they are asked to go deeper in
their thinking.
The teacher serves as a guide for the inquiry process:

Probing Modeling

Providing
Feedback
suggestions
Strategies for ELL Instruction During Explore

- Look and Draw

- Science Buzz
- Four Corners
- Concept Sort
- Exploratory Stations
Mediating Language Through Explore
Tips for Planning Explore for ELLs

- Design exploratory tasks that grab your students’ interest and invite conversation. Thoughtfully designed
tasks ensure that students have ample time to interact with each other and the instructional materials.
The tasks must also allow the teacher to circulate and interact with the students.
- Think through how you will manage instruction to maximize opportunities for students to practice and
use the language. Make sure that the environment is set up in such a manner that students have room to
explore and that all materials are available and accessible. Provide students with clear directions and
expectations. As you circulate among the students, plan how you will establish purpose, clarify the task,
and motivate students.
- Develop a system for gathering valuable information while students are thinking and talking, to help you
plan for ongoing instruction. Beyond clipboards, notepads, or stickies for jotting down notes, make sure
that you have the opportunity to circulate amongst students working in groups to record the language
they are using. Prepare a set of target questions, with emphasis on why and how questions, which probe
into what students understand and can express.
Decide upon the types of science notebook entries and other artifacts that will provide you and the
students with a record of progress in language and concept attainment.
Explicit Language Instruction Through Explain
Planning activities
Explain involves strategies that compel students to use specific academic language to express their
understanding. Such strategies allow students to delve into their previous experience, to infer
meaning and draw conclusions about what they know, and to communicate their concept
knowledge to the teacher and peers.

• Pictorial Input
• Think-Pair-Share • 10/2 Lecture
Chart

• Interactive Read-
• Shared Reading Alouds/Think- • AB Partner Shar
Alouds
Academic Language Performance Through Extend

This stage provides students with the

opportunity to put their learning into
practice, extending their exploration of
scientific concepts in such a way that
allows them to use what they have
learned in a new context.
Tips for Planning Extend for ELLs
• Carefully examine available text resources. Search for alternative multimedia formats that will make
the content accessible for students. Select texts that match your language goals and that are aligned to
the language strengths and needs of your students. Consider creating your own narration of the
content that is better suited to the proficiency level of your students.
• Identify and plan how you will input the targeted academic language in your instruction through
strategies, reading, visual representations, or thinking tasks.
• Create optimal opportunity for students to receive comprehensible language input and to practice
and use the language meaningfully.
• Thoughtfully designed tasks in this stage ensure that students have ample time to interact with one
another and the instructional materials.
• Circulate and interact with students for the ongoing assessment of language strengths and needs.
• Utilize varied grouping patterns in order to maximize opportunities for students to practice and use
the language.
• Determine the appropriate format for science notebook entries to best stimulate the use of academic
language to express content understanding.
Academic Language Performance Through Extend

Planning activities
Instruction during Extend involves utilizing strategies that ensure extended intervals
of thought, talk, and interaction, such as the following:

• Farmer in • Inside/Outside • Travelers

• Four Corners • Storyboards
the Dell Circles and Talkers
Assessment Features
Factors That Influence ELL Assessment

Learning English in order to learn in English is a holistic, nonlinear, and constantly evolving process
predicated upon multiple instructional factors that much of current assessment practice does not
adequately address (Pappamihiel and Walser 2009).
Numerous documents for teachers have emerged across the decades that outline a developmental
sequence of characteristic language performances for language acquisition.

- Terrell (1981) identified four levels of proficiency: Preproduction, Early Production, Speech
Emergence, and Intermediate Fluency.
- The Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL)
- The World-Class Instructional Design and Assessment (WIDA) Consortium’s 2004 ELP standards
have also identified five levels of developing language: Entering, Beginning, Developing, Expanding,
and Bridging.
Assessment
Features
Assessment
Features
Assessment
Features
Assessment
Features
Classroom-based Assessment
There are several advantages to relying on classroom-based assessments over standardized tests:

Evidence can be gathered of student Teachers have immediate

mastery of the standards that is In essence, assessments can be access to assessment
broader than that which can be conducted in more authentic and results, which they can then
obtained from a standardized test meaningful ways. use to improve their
administered in a brief period of time. instruction

Formal standards-based assessment tools:

diagnostic assessments, chapter tests, and rubrics
To monitor progress and ensure that ELLs can access the content concepts and skills curriculum
frameworks.
They are embedded
Informal within
assessments: these instructional
Performance-based materials.
student work
products, journals, checklists, and observations
Can be the most adaptable, relevant, and accurate tools available to teachers
They are designed to help the classroom teacher plan and modify the curriculum to meet the needs of
individual learners.
Assessing ELL with in Inquiry-Based Science
Authenticity, intentionality, and purposeful interaction should be principles of ELL
assessment.

In the Engage stage, the preassessment of English-language proficiency can be

captured through careful observation and documented in anecdotal records.

Analyzing the language use of English language learners at the onset of instruction will
provide insight into what students understand, the level of vocabulary students
already know and use, and their ability to communicate their understanding in the
appropriate grammatical forms.

This initial data will aid teachers in determining the language support ELLs will need in
order to maximize the acquisition of academic language through science content.
 Assessing ELL with in Inquiry-Based Science

In the Explore stage, formative assessment is used to help teachers understand the
progress students are making in understanding science concepts as well as their
progress in practicing and using new language.
Finding out what students struggle to express orally and in writing at this early stage
helps guide the design of future instructional interventions in the remaining stages.
 Assessing ELL with in Inquiry-Based Science

Tips for Assessing English Language Learners Within Inquiry-Based Science

When assessing English language learners within inquiry-based science,

consider the following:

• Match your expectations

• Use multiple measures • Establish a classroom
for language performance • Evaluate language
for assessing language assessment system for
to English language produced both orally and
and content evaluating language in
proficiency level in writing.
understanding. ongoing instruction.
expectations.
Consolidating activity:

Utilize one of the resources to plan the stage you decide and suggest one IB activity
for ELL focusing on language development support.
References

» de Oliveira, L. C., Obenchain, K. M., Kenney, R. H., & Oliveira, A. W. (2019). Teaching the content areas to
English Language Learners in secondary schools. Springer International Publishing.
» Ellis, Rod. 1994. The Study of Second Language Acquisition. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
» Mora-Flores, E., Beltran, D., & Sarmiento, L. (2012). Science for English language learners: Developing
academic language through inquiry-based instruction. Teacher Created Materials.
» Sengul, O., Enderle, P. J., & Schwartz, R. S. (2021). Examining science teachers' enactment of argument-
driven inquiry (ADI) instructional model. International Journal of Science Education, 1-19.