How can teachers in bilingual, dual-immersion, and mainstream classrooms support student language use? How can we move beyond a focus on language as vocabulary to engage students in using all of their diverse linguistic and semiotic resources to engage in science? Across the country, new standards and frameworks for language development promote the bridging of disciplinary content, language, and literacy to support students in their academic learning. In doing so, they move beyond seeing language as listening, reading and writing to understanding it as engaging in scientific uses of language, such as modeling, explaining, and communicating.

This workshop will focus on how teachers can use different tools and strategies to support ELLs in developing their language while meeting three-dimensional science standards. Participants will engage as learners in activities that involve the practices of modeling and argumentation and include embedded support for language development and collaboration. Based on their engagement, participants will identify the language opportunities afforded by the science and engineering practices and concrete strategies to support student-to-student discourse and collective sensemaking.

3 Key Takeaways

• How to apply language development frameworks to support science learning.
• How to plan lessons that integrate science and language goals.
• Strategies and tools to support multilingual learners to engage in science practices.

Emily Adah Miller taught preschool, elementary, and middle school for more than 2 decades, the last ten as science specialist and ESL/Bilingual teacher. She was a co-writer for the NGSS and the NGSS Diversity and Equity Team’s Appendix D. Adah Miller served as Co-PI on the Multiple Literacies in Project-based Learning Grant and PI for Supporting Multilingual Learners in Scientific Sensemaking through an Interactional Approach to Language. Adah Miller collaborated with Wisconsin Center for Education Research to design Discourse Tools aligned with the ELPD Framework, and co-chaired the adoption of the WIDA 2020 ELD Framework standards in Wisconsin. Adah Miller advocates for teacher voice, professionalization, and agency in decision-making as essential ingredients for high quality and equitable science learning environments.