In today’s diverse classrooms, science teachers must support students learning English as an additional language while fostering their scientific curiosity. This interactive presentation, designed for middle and high school science teachers and support staff, offers a practical approach to meeting this need. Through empathy-building activities, attendees will gain a deeper understanding of the challenges multilingual students face, and they’ll leave with actionable tools, resources, and strategies to create a more inclusive learning environment.
Instead of an abstract discussion on ideal solutions, this session is grounded in reality—focused on changes you can implement in your classroom next week. Participants will explore targeted methods for making science and engineering practices accessible, build a network of like-minded educators, and engage in a sample lesson designed to show how phenomena-based teaching can naturally support multilingual learners. Join this session at the 2025 Wisconsin Society of Science Teachers convention to enrich your teaching toolkit and inspire your multilingual students to thrive in science!
We will share the research trajectory of a program developed to support multilingual learners to demonstrate their evolving learning in science and spend time looking at examples of the assessments we developed. Participants will discuss the design principles involved in accessible assessments and how to leverage them to develop more robust academic language over time. Participants will leave with 3D assessments and grading rubrics ready for their middle school classrooms, as well as research-based strategies for adapting their existing assessments for struggling readers and English Learners.
Many science educators are using existing High Quality Instructional Materials developed outside of Wisconsin and want to adapt them to be more relevant for our students. Finding the time and resources to make adaptations that do not change the trajectory of the existing storyline can be challenging. During this presentation we will consider the rationale for changing storylines, examine cautions of equating “local” with “relevant” phenomena, and discuss options for the most realistic places to spend our efforts to adapt existing materials to make them more relevant for our students. Suggestions are research-based with recommendations from professional developers.
