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Hi Shmouni, You bring up an important consideration when teaching science to students with a first language other than English.  Their cultural backgrounds, familiarity with the English language,  individual confidences and interests, plus a host of other factors need to be considered as a teacher determines how to be culturally responsive  AND culturally relevant in his/her teaching.  I put together a collection of resources in the Learning Center that might be of interest to you.  There is a book that I think is extremely helpful in providing ideas on how to teach from students' strengths, how to teach academic language to ELLs, and how to see the create culturally responsive learning communities.  It is called, "Teaching Science to English Language Learners: Building on Students' Strengths" (by Cathy Amanti) and is available for purchase in the Learning Center.  I have also put together a collection of resources in the Learning Center that include a few book chapters from this book.  The collection is titled: Culture and Science Learning.  You can access it at:  http://learningcenter.nsta.org/mylibrary/collection.aspx?id=hs5scwFPUfY_E I would love to hear about specific strategies that others are using in their science classrooms to help our ELLs be successful in learning the language of science! Thanks for asking about this, Shmouni, and best wishes for a long and effective teaching career! Carolyn

I do think a teacher can grow an ELL student alone. The growth might be minimal, because there are so many students in one class, but there will be growth. I am a bilingual student teacher, so i don't have much experience but one thing that stuck with me in school was to build a relationship with your student and learn about them and their culture. That being said, i think you can help an ELL student grow if you take time to learn about them, what is the best way to help them, and maybe even learn a few words from their language, talk to the parents about what they think you could do to help him (just to find out more about the student, a teacher once told me parents are experts on their child so ask them for help).

Thank you, Adaliz. Since this post I have started leaving feedback on my ELL assignments, and started breaking down words for everyone in the class so as not to directly single out any student(s).