Writing science in an upper elementary classroom: A genre-based approach to teaching English language learners

Abstract

This case study presents the implementation of a genre-based pedagogy informed by systemic-functional linguistics (SFL) with the goal of scaffolding the teaching of procedural recounts in the content area of science in a 4th grade classroom with several English language learners (ELLs). We use one L2 writer representative of the mainstreamed ELLs to demonstrate how the genre work impacted the focal student's writing development. This article addresses a major need in the field of second language writing: identifying instructional practices for teaching upper elementary ELLs to write school-based genres. © 2014 Elsevier Inc.