With the significant enrollment increase of English Language Learners (ELLs) nationwide, social s... more With the significant enrollment increase of English Language Learners (ELLs) nationwide, social studies teachers face challenges to educate these students. As a response to the literature of preparing all content teachers to work with ELLs, this article introduces three teacher-friendly language-focused strategies. These strategies help social studies teachers to address the linguistic demands in this specific discipline for the purpose of content mastery. The author firstly discusses the linguistic challenges in social studies and argues that commonly used cognitively-based strategies often fail to provide sufficient scaffolding for ELLs. The author then introduces three language-focused strategies with examples.
This article reports the results of an ethnographic research about the multimodal science discour... more This article reports the results of an ethnographic research about the multimodal science discourse in a sixth-grade sheltered classroom involving English Language Learners (ELLs) only. Drawing from the perspective of multimodality, this study examines how science learning is constructed in science lectures through multiple semiotic resources, including oral language, gestures, and visual products. Specifically, the study asks three research questions: 1. What is the nature of multimodal communication between the teacher and students? 2. How does science learning occur in the classroom from a multimodal perspective? and 3. How does language development occur in the classroom? Data include eight months of classroom observation with video and audio recordings, fieldnotes, formal, and informal interviews with the teacher and students, photographs of textbook pages, students' final products, and teacher products. Results show that the gap between the multimodal representation and communication, as well as the disconnection between teacher discourse and student discourse, provides limited evidence of the students' knowledge reconstruction. The gap between the everyday language and scientific language leads to limited language development. The study expands the current knowledge base about ELLs' multimodal classroom experiences in relating to science learning and language development. The results can be used to help both researchers and educators in the future to examine the multimodal instructional design in terms of its effectiveness for science learning. # 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 53: 7–30, 2016
With the significant enrollment increase of English Language Learners (ELLs) nationwide, social s... more With the significant enrollment increase of English Language Learners (ELLs) nationwide, social studies teachers face challenges to educate these students. As a response to the literature of preparing all content teachers to work with ELLs, this article introduces three teacher-friendly language-focused strategies. These strategies help social studies teachers to address the linguistic demands in this specific discipline for the purpose of content mastery. The author firstly discusses the linguistic challenges in social studies and argues that commonly used cognitively-based strategies often fail to provide sufficient scaffolding for ELLs. The author then introduces three language-focused strategies with examples.
This article reports the results of an ethnographic research about the multimodal science discour... more This article reports the results of an ethnographic research about the multimodal science discourse in a sixth-grade sheltered classroom involving English Language Learners (ELLs) only. Drawing from the perspective of multimodality, this study examines how science learning is constructed in science lectures through multiple semiotic resources, including oral language, gestures, and visual products. Specifically, the study asks three research questions: 1. What is the nature of multimodal communication between the teacher and students? 2. How does science learning occur in the classroom from a multimodal perspective? and 3. How does language development occur in the classroom? Data include eight months of classroom observation with video and audio recordings, fieldnotes, formal, and informal interviews with the teacher and students, photographs of textbook pages, students' final products, and teacher products. Results show that the gap between the multimodal representation and communication, as well as the disconnection between teacher discourse and student discourse, provides limited evidence of the students' knowledge reconstruction. The gap between the everyday language and scientific language leads to limited language development. The study expands the current knowledge base about ELLs' multimodal classroom experiences in relating to science learning and language development. The results can be used to help both researchers and educators in the future to examine the multimodal instructional design in terms of its effectiveness for science learning. # 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 53: 7–30, 2016
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