Connected Classrooms
Years 3-4
EAL/D considerations in Two-way Science
• Build visual word banks wherever possible
• Encourage students to hear, say, and practice words. EAL/D students will need to oral language repetition to become confident in using new vocabulary.
• When looking at comparisons, remember to model comparative language -er, -est
• Longer, multisyllabic words cause confusion. Encourage the awareness of syllables, the root of each word and the role of affixes in scientific vocabulary.
• When writing longer observations, rhetorical conjunctions are key. Have these displayed, in use, around the classroom (e.g. As a result…)
• When asking students to produce something, always give them a sample of what you are expecting, both the structure and the tense that you expect. Different countries, use different text structures and different verb forms.
• When discussing a hypothesis, students will be using conditional verb forms. These should be modelled. If a happens, then, I think b will happen… NB – there is a great Teacher video on hypothesis in TESMC resources.
• Write key words wherever possible and explicitly mention spelling, pronunciation and a clear, simple meaning wherever possible. Recast where needed for use of this vocabulary in context.
• For more information, consult the Progress Map
https://watesol.org.au/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Middle-Childhood.pdf
the EAL/D Learning Area Annotations
https://docs.acara.edu.au/resources/EALD_Learning_Area_Annotations_English_Revised_06_05_12.pdf
Meeting the needs of students for whom English is an additional language or dialect
and the EAL/D Elaborations
https://tesol.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/60238-EALD-elaborations-Full-Version-Complete-v2.pdf