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From http://www.edcentral.org/science-dlls/

Integrating Language and Content: Science for Dual Language Learners
by Janie T. Carnock
March 28, 2016

In many school systems across the country, the prevailing paradigm for dual language learners (DLLs) has been to intentionally separate content instruction from language learning. …

However, to better support DLLs, education leaders must keep in mind a commonsense truth: language is fundamentally, necessarily embedded into all content. Consider: when a DLL is asked to explain the science of how seeds grow into flowers or why governments have laws, she needs a system of words to do so. That’s the very point of language — to communicate content, to communicate ideas. We develop language not just to develop it, but for productive, useful purposes. …

For these reasons, researchers and advocates have pushed in recent years for a new pedagogy of integrated language learning, one in which language is learned and used authentically in the service of learning content. Under this framework, all teachers take responsibility for DLLs’ academic success, even as ESL teachers continue to play a targeted role for accelerating language acquisition (especially for DLLs with little to no English).

Science presents a particularly ripe area for all DLLs to engage in meaningful, authentic contexts that integrate language and content learning in this way. Science can already be uniquely engaging for DLLs, given the concrete, hands-on nature of experiments and tinkering, learning that might not require as high an English proficiency bar from DLLs. Nonetheless, science does offer many linguistic opportunities related to asking questions, collaborating, constructing explanations, and arguing from evidence.

Read the full article at http://www.edcentral.org/science-dlls/