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How can we make science lessons meaningful for English Language Learners? 

When introducting new vocabulary, create a Word Wall that shows the new word along with a picture of what the word represents.  The students will learn to associate the word with the picture.

In science, interactions are essential. Conducting 5E inquiry lessons will allow ELL learners to enhance their social skills, along with gaining different perspectives of their classmates on content. Providing hand-on activities, assists in a visual understanding of the content. 

There are many teaching strategies that you can incorporate into the lesson to make it more meaningful for ELL students. You can make connections to student's out-of-school experiences so they can relate better with the content. You can also have students work collaborative and pair up a native and nonnative English speaking student so they can share their ideas. Hope these ideas are helpful.

You can make science lessons meaningful by using the concept of sheltered instruction as a way to adapt instruction for English Language Learners. The steps to adapt an inquiry-based science lesson plan for ELLs are as follows: Step 1 is to determine the skills and concepts that you want your students to learn, Step 2 is to incorporate a student’s background knowledge into the lesson, Step 3 is to select meaningful teaching/learning experiences for the students, and finally, Step 4 is to assess student knowledge.

Science lessons can be meaningful if they are authentic. Authentic lessons allow student's to develop knowledge of specific ideas that can be connected to their personal lives. For authentic lessons, an educator can use the surrounding community, cultural backgrounds, or prior experiences of their students to create lessons that are truly authentic. Authentic lessons can be more interesting for the students through the use of the 5E instruction model that involves the steps of: Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate, and Evaluate. This instructional sequence has a better ability to scaffold the learning of our students by building upon prior knowledge and experience of our students. This helps our students develop a greater understanding of the scientific idea, and makes the lesson more meaningful.