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Hi Thora!
My name is Grace Nielsen. I am an undergraduate student studying Elementary Education, with a minor in Special Education, at the University of Nothern Iowa. Though I am not an expert, I have spent a lot of time studying teaching practices that help make learning assessible to all students, including ELL. Bellow I will list some tips to help support the learning needs of ELL students. Many of these practices also help support the learning of student with dissabilities.
1. Begin the lesson by introducing key vocabulary terms. Science is a vocabulary heavy subject, which makes it especially difficult for ELL students to follow and understand. To help reduce the language barrier, there is variety of short learning activities you can use to engage students learning key vocabulry terms. Here is a link to an article that details one way to select and teach key vocabulary: https://www.edutopia.org/blog/vocabulary-instruction-teaching-tips-rebecca-alber
2. Provide students with sentence strips and vocabulary cards. Students cannot communicate their understanding of science if they lack the language need to describe it. Providing this support allows students to develope langauge and content knowledge at the same time. Here is a link to a video of a teacher effectivily implementing this process in her language-diverse classroom: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-h3jHvYWcdo&feature=youtu.be
3. Allow students to discuss their sience ideas and understanding in their native language. If possible, use the 'language buddy' system. This system pairs a less advanced ELL student with a more advanced ELL student. The more advanced ELL student can help translate and clarify terms and vocabulary to the less advanced ELL student. This practice allows students to better comprehend science content knowledge. Here is a link to an article that provides more detail about the language buddy system and other practices for supporting ELL: http://static.nsta.org/files/sc0601_22.pdf
To help improve the assability of science content for all students, consider planning lessons within the Universal Design for Learnign (UDL) framework. Here is a link to a website the provides more information about UDL: http://udlguidelines.cast.org/?utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=none&utm_source=udlcenter&utm_content=site-banner
I hope this was helpful!
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