Workshop 3: Language and Science Education – Part 2
In the second workshop ideas and methods were presented which can be used to make science (student) teachers sensitive to the heterogeneity and diversity in science classes. Furthermore, we summed up the ideas on how (student) teachers can diagnose languages, knowledge, etc. in science classes.
After being conscious of the differences and diagnosing those differences, it is time to deal with it in science class.
III. Making science students teachers deal with linguistic heterogeneous classes
Phase 1
Before starting the topic of dealing with linguistic heterogeneity, in our seminars, we want our student teachers to have practical experience with this topic. For this, we divide the whole group of students into smaller groups of three or four. Each group gets access to a google doc sheet which contains a scan (or similar) of a page of a textbook, or working sheet, etc. Their topic is, to discuss in the small group about the single parts of the page which could be especially difficult for usage in language heterogeneous classes. They should also make notes on this in a google doc. After about 15-20 minutes, we join the single google doc files and comment on students` work using the comments. Here, students also ask questions they were not able to answer in the group.
During the time of online teaching, via zoom, we start the session with a Kahoot game on diagnostic. After that, the small peer-groups were sent to different breakout rooms and were able to discuss here instead of face-to-face.
Phase 2
The next phase is more theoretical in nature. Student teachers should work on tools and methods on how to deal with language heterogeneous classes. For this, first, they need to see this video on CLIL and work with the Prezi on “Methods for language sensitive science teaching and learning”.
Phase 3
This phase is similar to the first one. Student teachers work again on the small peer-groups and the topic is to develop new or change the given page from phase I which is now language sensitive. They can use any methods presented in Prezi. Also here, after about 15-20 minutes we join the google docs one after the other, comment on their work, give feedback, ask questions but also answer student teachers` questions.
Discuss in your interdisciplinary team: How can those instruments be adapted to your language and country? (if you want to use the Prezi tool and adapt it, please send Silvija an email. For adaptation, you need to have Prezi account).