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Childhood Education
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Toward Integration: An Instructional Model of Science and

Academic Language
a a b c a
Cecilia Silva , Molly Weinburgh , Robert Malloy , Kathy Horak Smith & Jenesta Nettles Marshall
a
College of Education, Texas Christian University , Fort Worth
b
Ilima Intermediate School , Ewa Beach , Hawaii
c
Mathematics Department , Tarleton State University , Stephenville , Texas
Published online: 01 Mar 2012.

To cite this article: Cecilia Silva , Molly Weinburgh , Robert Malloy , Kathy Horak Smith & Jenesta Nettles Marshall (2012)
Toward Integration: An Instructional Model of Science and Academic Language, Childhood Education, 88:2, 91-95, DOI:
10.1080/00094056.2012.662119

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 Toward
Integration
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copyright © Rob Marmion

An Instructional Model of Science and Academic Language

by Cecilia Silva, Molly Weinburgh, Robert Malloy,
Kathy Horak Smith, and Jenesta Nettles Marshall

S
chool success in the United States is grounded in English-based academic literacy. As the number of English
language learners (ELLs) entering schools continues to increase, more elementary classroom teachers are faced
with the challenge of providing opportunities for students to acquire a new language in conjunction with the
acquisition of content knowledge.
Most elementary teachers are comfortable with teaching the language skills of reading, writing, listening, and speaking;
thus, they approach most lessons “with an emphasis on language and texts” (Lemke, 2004, p. 33). As generalists, though,
elementary teachers are less likely to have had opportunities to develop the skills, knowledge, and dispositions necessary to
cultivate learning through inquiry-based lessons. In contrast, teachers with strong science education backgrounds are more
likely to use inquiry and approach a lesson “with questions about how things happen in the world” (Lemke, 2004, p. 33).
They begin a lesson with the experience, positing that exploration before explanation can enhance science concepts learning
(Bybee et al., 2006; Lawson, Abraham, & Renner, 1989; Schwab, 1966). Science teachers generally are not as familiar using
strategies to enhance emerging language skills;
thus, they may not recognize opportunities to make Cecilia Silva and Molly Weinburgh are Professors, College
language explicit to the learners. of Education, Texas Christian University, Fort Worth.
However, both generalists and science teachers Robert Malloy is a teacher at Ilima Intermediate School,
must realize the value of language in context and Ewa Beach, Hawaii. Kathy Horak Smith is Assistant
the importance of situated meaning, whereby Professor, Mathematics Department, Tarleton State
word meaning changes with context. Gee (2004) University, Stephenville, Texas. Jenesta Nettles Marshall is
further explains that situated meaning is “rooted a doctoral candidate, College of Education, Texas Christian
in embodied experience” (p. 19), not merely in University, Fort Worth.

March/April 2012 / 91
 verbal definitions. An inquiry-based science
lesson engages students mentally and emotionally
with ideas (posing a question, developing a plan,
making evidence-based arguments, revising and
clarifying their ideas) as well as physically with
materials (making models and manipulating
variables). The shared, hands-on experience
provides the children with an anchor or context
that gives relevance to the new language needed to
communicate about the experience. Children are
“more likely to learn words that they have heard in
meaning-rich contexts—contexts in which there
were demonstrations of the word’s meaning, or
connections drawn between the unknown word and
other known related words” (Snow, 2008, p. 78).
Downloaded by [University of Illinois Chicago] at 23:10 26 November 2014
Scaffolded science inquiry can provide a context for
language development.
Here, we outline an instructional model that can
be used to optimize science and language learning
in the classroom. The authors have developed the
5R instructional model (Weinburgh & Silva, 2010)
to support teachers as they integrate academic
language into content instruction. The model
combines five strategies already familiar to teachers
helping ELLs understand and begin to use aca-
demic language. With thoughtful planning, four of
the strategies—replace, reveal, repeat, and reposi-
tion—are utilized by the teacher as opportunities
emerge within the lesson, and are context-anchored.
The fifth strategy—reload—can be used by teachers
to reinforce language introduced in previous les-
sons, and is context reflective. (See Figure 1.)
Figure 1
92 \ Childhood Education
Setting the Science Context
The model we propose emerged from three years
of teaching summer school to recently immigrated
elementary students in a large urban district. While
the content selected was science, we emphasized
acquisition of academic language. The goal for
the summer program was to address the National
Research Council (1996) standard stating that 4th-
grade students should have an understanding of
how the earth changes, and so we chose an erosion
unit using the inquiry approach.
We began by eliciting prior knowledge about
erosion, asking the students to fill out the K and
W portions of a KWL chart. Next, we took the
students on a field trip around the campus to see
if they could identify places where erosion had
occurred. During the 15-day unit, the students
used stream tables to model the erosion process
and indentify evidence of erosion. They changed
variables to answer the teacher-initiated question,
“What will happen to my sandy field if we have a
gentle rain on dry ground?” Students then moved
through a progression of questions: “What will
happen with a gentle rain on wet ground?”; “What
will happen with a hard rain on dry ground?”;
“What will happen with a hard rain on wet
ground?” Each day, the students worked with their
stream table models as they discussed, journaled,
and read about erosion. Throughout the inquiry,
the students built conceptual understandings of
erosion, improved their science process skills, and
developed literacy skills. (See Figure 2.)
Supporting Academic Language
Acquisition in a Science Lesson
For success in science, all students are expected to
advance in academic language. Students must be
able to use oral and printed language that represents
the practices of the scientific community. ELLs
usually develop conversational fluency within
two years of exposure to English. The academic
language proficiency required in school, however,
may take five to seven years to develop and is
cognitively more demanding (Cummins, 2000;
Hakuta, Butler, & Witt, 2000). Unfortunately,
the development of academic English is frequently
ignored (Scarcella, 2002, 2003).
One feature of academic language that often
challenges ELLs is the lexical component or
academic vocabulary related to science. In
addressing the relation between knowledge of
scientific words and scientific knowledge, Snow
(2008) discusses the emphasis that is placed on the
development of scientific vocabulary within science
textbooks—particularly in biology instruction.
 Snow argues that students must develop an following example, the
understanding of the knowledge and perspective teacher is using a stream
that reflects the scientific discourse critical to table to point out evidence
learning how to think like a scientist: “Without of erosion:
this kind of knowledge (which researchers refer
to as “theory of mind”), understanding terms like T: Let’s look at this student’s
claim, deny, disprove, and provide evidence for, which stream table [the stream
are central to scientific discourse, is impossible” (p. table was placed on a
81). Knowledge of appropriate vocabulary allows document camera so that
scientists to efficiently communicate the details that all the students could
describe a phenomenon they are investigating— see it; the teacher points
evidence, materials, and conclusion—so that others to a formation]. What
can understand and replicate them. is this?
While researchers do not call for the explicit S: A line.
teaching of the various linguistic components of S: A canyon.
Downloaded by [University of Illinois Chicago] at 23:10 26 November 2014

academic English, they do emphasize the role of
the teacher in scaffolding features of academic
language within science instruction (Gee, 2008).
Furthermore, researchers propose that vocabulary
development should be context-based (Cummins,
1996; Gibbons, 2009) and should emerge from the
science activity.
The 5R Model—replace, reveal, reposition,
repeat, and reload—can be used to scaffold
specialized science language within the context of
science lessons. The 5Rs naturally emerge when
teachers are aware of the content as well as the
language that ELLs will need to comprehend and
express meanings within the science lesson. As
more classroom teachers working with ELLs engage
in backward design curriculum planning models
(Wiggins & McTighe, 2005), they not only identify
content learning outcomes, but also anticipate the
academic language that students must develop
in order to fully participate in the curriculum
(Colombo & Furbush, 2009; Echevarria, Vogt, &
Short, 2010; Freeman & Freeman, 2009). In these
classrooms, teachers understand that for ELLs to
succeed, they must acquire the academic vocabulary
as well as the writing styles of each discipline.
Replace
Students begin talking about their science
experience by using language that is familiar.
Encouraging the use of everyday language is a
superb way to introduce students to the inquiry
process and engage them with the phenomenon
being studied. As the students discuss the science,
the teacher uses every chance to help them
change or replace the everyday language with
scientific language. A replacement is a one-to-
one correspondence in which one or two words
used in everyday language are substituted with
more appropriate academic language to represent
concepts used in the science classroom. In the
T: It does make a line in the
sand. We could use the
word canyon, but there is
another term we can use. Figure 2
Because it is small, we
call it a gully.
The following interaction provides another
example:
S: Can I draw a picture of what I saw?
T: Yes, that is a good idea.
S: I looked for things that showed that erosion
happened.
T: We could say that you are looking for evidence
of erosion.
S: Evidence?
T: Yes, when we have things that show us that
something happened, we can say we have
evidence.
Students are given academic words to replace the
more common words or phrase. The everyday
language remains a part of their total vocabulary,
even as they are learning to use the academic words
when talking about the science concepts.
Reveal
Some academic words do not have a corresponding
word in everyday language. In planning a lesson,
the teacher looks ahead to the language that a child
needs to acquire to be proficient in the subject and
is prepared to reveal the new, distinctive vocabulary.
This backward planning allows the teacher to
identify the concepts that need to be studied in
preparation for creating opportunities that will
reveal new terms. In the following example, the
students were introduced to the proper name for
the equipment they would be using to conduct
their experiments:

March/April 2012 / 93
 T: This is called a stream table: S-T-R-E-A-M table.
Give me another word for stream.
S: A river.
S: A creek.
T: This is called a stream table because we are going
to use water like you find in stream. We could
call it a creek table or river table, but someone
before us decided to call it a stream table. We
use a standard language so we all know what we
are talking about.
The following conversation occurred as the
students were considering what factors could cause
erosion:
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T: We were looking for agents of erosion. What is
an agent?
S: Secret agent?
T: That is a way we often use the word agent.
Let’s think more about what I would mean
by an agent of erosion. We could say that we
are looking for something that makes erosion
happen.
S: Something that makes it happen?
T: Yes, an agent of erosion is the thing that makes
erosion happen.
The teacher uses the strategy of revealing to be sure
that vocabulary is introduced into the lesson as it is
needed to help enhance learning.
Reposition
Certain ways of speaking and writing are more
common in science. A task for teachers is to model
the use of scientists’ language and encourage the
students to shift from everyday discourse toward the
academic shared discourses of specific disciplines.
Repositioning is a way for the teacher to mentor
the students in the intricacies of the language: “The
development of literacy within any subject in the
school curriculum involves learning the technical
language, grammatical patterns, and generic
structures particular to the subject” (Gibbons,
2003, p. 252). Gibbons further emphasizes the
critical role of the teacher in co-constructing
meaning by building the linguistic bridges that
move ELLs from unfamiliar ways of using the
language to those that more closely reflect the
linguistic register of the content area. In our model,
repositioning refers to the teacher’s conscious role in
co-constructing these new ways of using academic
language. An example of repositioning follows:
T: What did you see happening in the stream table?
S: When the sand moved.
94 \ Childhood Education
S: The hole.
S: A ditch, we saw a ditch.
S: The pile of sand.
T: What do we call the pile of sand?
S: Alluvial fan.
T: And the ditch?
S: A gully.
T: All of these are true, even if we did not see the
sand move, see where it was, and see where it
piles up. So I could say, “I see that the process
of moving earth materials—sand—by a natural
force—water—has happened.” Do you agree?
S: Yes.
T: We do not have to say the long sentence
“moving earth materials by a natural force,” but
can just say “erosion.” A scientist would say, “I
see evidence of erosion.”
By moving from the more common way
of expressing an idea to the more concise and
conceptually dense language generally found in
textbooks, the teacher can help the students begin
to have an understanding of the grammatical
patterns that are used in academic science language.
Repeat
Hearing and saying a new word many times is
beneficial for acquiring academic vocabulary. The
teacher can help the students develop ownership of
an academic word or sentence structure by using
the label or grammatical form as often as possible.
In the following example, the teacher models the
word in multiple sentence structures to familiarize
students with pronunciation and various usages of
the word.
T: I want us to think about what we know about
models. Earlier, we were talking about the 3-D
models you made with clay. Let’s look at the
model that one group made. I can tell where
you were on the campus from looking at the
model. What is this a model of?
S: The creek.
T: Yes it is. Scientists also make another kind of
model. They make a model to see if they can
answer their question. We will make a model to
help answer our question about the effect of rain
on my yard.
Reload
Replacing, repeating, revealing, and repositioning
naturally emerge as the teacher seeks opportunities
to use key academic vocabulary and grammatical
forms within the lesson. In contrast, reloading
occurs after the target language has emerged

within the lesson, and it provides students
with the opportunity to develop metalinguistic
awareness or word consciousness (Anderson &
Nagy, 1992). Reloading is different than strategies
often advocated for use in ELL settings in which
vocabulary instruction often precedes the lesson
(Echevarria et al., 2010). Through reloading,
students discuss words that had been previously
introduced within the context of the science lesson.
During this phase of the 5Rs model, previously
introduced vocabulary words are formally defined
while students engage in discussions that highlight
various features of the word. For example, students
might compare everyday words with academic
words (e.g., guess/hypothesize) or consider whether
Downloaded by [University of Illinois Chicago] at 23:10 26 November 2014
the words reloaded reflect science content or
processes (e.g., alluvial fan/hypothesize). When
appropriate, ELLs also identify cognates—words
that have the same linguistic root and are similar
in spelling and meaning (e.g., Spanish hipótesis and
English hypothesis). Reloaded words are then placed
in the word wall for future reference and further
revising activities. Reloading is a purposeful action
that engages students in reading, writing, speaking,
and listening.
Concluding Thoughts
Having used the 5R Instructional Model with ELL
students, we believe that it is a powerful teaching
tool that can benefit not only ELLs but all students.
We believe using this model helps students develop
the academic and transitional language necessary to
engage in the specialist discourse of the sciences.
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Author Note
This article forms part of a larger study on acquisition
of language and content knowledge for English language
learners partially funded by the JPMorgan Chase
Foundation, and by the Andrews Institute and Center for
Urban Education in the Texas Christian University’s College
of Education.
March/April 2012 / 95