By Peggy Ashbrook
Posted on 2015-09-10
Please welcome guest blogger Karen N. Nemeth, writing about making science learning accessible in multilingual classrooms. Karen N. Nemeth, Ed.M. is an author, consultant and presenter focusing on improving early childhood education for children who are dual language learners. She is a writer and consulting editor for NAEYC and holds leadership positions at NABE and TESOL. She has published many books and articles for early childhood educators and she provides resources for supporting diverse young learners and their families at: www.languagecastle.com
Science learning provides so many opportunities for hands-on exploration, discovery and discussion in early childhood. But, how can teachers make science learning meaningful for children who don’t speak the same language? The key to succeeding with dual language learners is to plan science activities with five key questions in mind:
These questions will help you in two ways. First, they will help you to make adaptations to the activities you plan to introduce so that the learning is accessible to all of the children. Second, they will guide you in deciding when some activities are just not going to work with a group of children who speak different languages.
Miss Janet saw a fun science idea on a teacher website. She thought about buying the bars of white soap and putting them in the microwave to watch them expand. The video on the website was pretty amazing. But, as Miss Janet starting adding the activity to her lesson plan format, she realized it didn’t really make a good connection for her students who are DLLs. She could use her words to explain what she was doing, but just watching a bar of soap expand in a microwave didn’t have any real meaning that a child could use and it was certainly not self-explanatory for DLLs. So, she moved on to an activity that she knew would benefit all of her students.
There are plenty of options for science explorations, so letting go of some just makes room for you to try others. Try these tips from a recent post on www.languagecastle.com
Now – dig in and have fun with science learning that works for DLLs!
Miss Janet went through a list of science activities. She crossed out “outer space” and “dinosaurs” because they can’t be represented in the here and now or in a child’s every day life. Instead, she came up with her own activities that involved cleaning things up in the classroom. She brought in different materials and explored with the children what happened when they blotted spilled water with paper towel, a sponge, a brush and dustpan, a plastic bag, a spray bottle of water or some aluminum foil. Then she presented other potential messes like spilled sand, a pile of crayons, and some beads. Using photos, Miss Janet encouraged the children to work in pairs to chart which materials were most effective for each kind of mess. She modeled for the children how they could draw what they observed or take pictures with their iPads. Some children focused on trying the same thing repeatedly. Others tried a few things and talked all about them together. And a few others focused intently on testing each combination and recording what they learned. The activity was meaningful and informative for all of the children and allowed each of them to learn about the physical world and about making observations even if they didn’t yet speak English!
Please welcome guest blogger Karen N. Nemeth, writing about making science learning accessible in multilingual classrooms. Karen N. Nemeth, Ed.M. is an author, consultant and presenter focusing on improving early childhood education for children who are dual language learners. She is a writer and consulting editor for NAEYC and holds leadership positions at NABE and TESOL.