In “Finding the Language to Teach Science,” an article posted yesterday at edweek.org, my colleague Sean Cavanagh has done a great job of showing us how teachers can teach English while also teaching academic content. In this case, the content is science.
As I travel around the country, I find that more schools are trying to figure out how to weave English instruction into content instruction. But I also still see a lot of students being taught isolated vocabulary in English-as-a-second-language classes that are separated from core-content classes.
Teaching academic content to ELLs who are in middle school is the focus of a conference to be held by CREATE in Minneapolis, Minn., next week. (CREATE stands for the National Center for Research on the Educational Achievement and Teaching of English Language Learners.) I cannot attend, but if any of you do, I’d be interested in hearing about what you learn.