To prepare preservice secondary science teachers to teach English learners (ELs), teacher education programs must provide sustained coursework and experiences in principles and strategies found effective in supporting ELs' learning of science. In the context of a teacher education program recognized for its attention to ELs, we investigated seven preservice secondary science teachers' understanding of academic language and of how to support EL students' use of academic language. More specifically, over the course of their 13-month program, we examined changes in (a) preservice teachers' understanding of the three levels of academic language (i.e., lexical, or vocabulary; syntactic, or sentence; and discursive, or message) and (b) the types of instructional support they reported using at each level (e.g., peer collaboration at the discursive level). We also compared their understanding of academic language and instructional support both to their experienced cooperating teachers' understanding and to their actual classroom practice. From qualitative analysis of data collected, we found that preservice teachers understood academic language as more than just vocabulary-as spanning lexical,

No abstract

No abstract

We investigated 10 secondary science teachers' facilitation of classroom discussions to examine how they went beyond eliciting student ideas to working with student ideas to support sensemaking. We qualitatively analysed video records of instruction and focussed our analysis on discussions stemming from formative assessments embedded in learning progressionbased curricular units. We found that discussions could be placed on a quality continuum from recitation, to emergent, to transitional, to productive based on the degree to which teachers went beyond eliciting student ideas. We also found that discussion quality reflected the type and distribution of discourse moves teachers employed. In the highest quality (or productive) discussions, teachers used a concerted array of discourse moves to elicit, mark, and build on student ideas, including pressing students for reasoning, highlighting similarities and differences among the ideas and reasonings presented, and connecting student ideas to the learning progression. Teachers used these discourse moves relatively evenly throughout productive discussions. This study contributes to the growing body of literature on ways teachers can effectively support student sensemaking. It illustrates how science teachers' use of discourse moves can shape the quality of discussions and points to the potential of learning progressions as a tool to facilitate productive discussions.

The desire to expose more students to computer science has led to the development of a plethora of educational activities [16,7,15,4] and outreach programs to broaden participation in computer science. Despite extensive resources (time and money), they have made little impact on the diversity of students pursuing computer science. To realize large gains, computational thinking must be integrated into K-12 systems, starting with elementary school. In order to do so, existing resources need to be adapted for a school setting.In order to make a curriculum with lessons that build on each other over several years, and accountability for student learning, we need standards, an understanding of how students learn, and identification of what students know before exposure to the curriculum.In this paper, we present our detailed findings of what fourth graders know before encountering a computational thinking curriculum. Groups of students participated in activities modified from CS Unplugged [4] in order to discover their knowledge (rather than provide instruction). We identify aspects of the activities students were able to complete successfully, and where they will need further instruction. We then explain how we used these results to modify our pilot curriculum.