Science and English Language Learners: Creating Opportunities to Align Teaching and Learning with Students’ Needs

Abstract

Addressing the challenges that emerge within science classrooms as a result of the diversity in language, culture, and varying general backgrounds of learners, requires ongoing attention, energy and commitment. In this chapter, we explore how working with a class of recent immigrant English language learners (ELLs) in whole class cogenerative dialogues can shed light on what students need to be successful both with learning science content and with understanding what it means to work together in order to achieve individual and collective goals