Weaving Together Science and English: An Interconnected Model of Language Development for Emergent Bilinguals

This research explores third-grade science and language instruction for emergent bilinguals designed through a framework of planning, lessons, and assessment in an interconnected model including content, linguistic features, and functions. Participants were a team of language specialist, classroom teacher, and researcher who designed interconnected science/ELD for 33 Spanish/English emergent bilinguals (14 English learners and 19 English proficient). Methods included functional linguistic and discourse analyses of observation transcripts and statistical analysis of pre and post assessments. Findings show gains in language and content from pre to post tests and increased engagement with targeted language, word choice, scientific vocabulary, and number of words.