**3. Pedagogical approach**

The pedagogical approach offered here is one intended to integrate content and language learning for mediating science learning to 'do science' and 'talk science.' As mentioned previously, one text type (genre) will be highlighted in this chapter as a language resource to mediate experience in science learning through the use of physical tools (online simulations) and symbolic tools (language). First, this author proposes the structural layout of the social semiotic tool of explanation texts in science. They can be sequential in nature to explain how a process occurs or they can be causal in that they explain cause-effect relationships. Thus, one item to consider in lesson design (online or face to face) is the language tasks students will engage in when constructing science explanations to interact with their peers and teacher. In sequential explanations, Humphrey et al. [8] describe these as the phases of a process in sequence to reveal how a process occurs (e.g., the process explained in the water cycle through each phase), whereas causal explanations may explain sequence but also why the process occurs (e.g., heat's effect in each phase of the water cycle).

#### **3.1 Instructional process**

One instructional process commonly used in teaching is the 5E cycle. The 5E cycle includes the following instructional processes a teacher plans to provide experiential learning opportunities to students: (1) engage-teachers work to gain an understanding of students' prior knowledge; (2) explore-students actively explore new concepts through hands-on activities (or virtual hands-on learning experiences); (3) explainhelping students organize new knowledge and ask clarifying questions for what they learned during the explore phase; (4) elaborate-students apply what new knowledge they have learned; and (5) evaluate-teachers plan for assessment or observation to determine if the core concepts of the lesson have been clearly understood by students. This author wants to focus on the explore and explain phases of this learning model for instructional planning that provides students with opportunities to 'do science' and 'talk science'.

While language as a social semiotic tool is important for sense making and activities reflecting how students do this through the construction of science explanations, equally important is the experiential component of interacting with science phenomena. In face-to-face teaching this happens mostly during lab investigations, where students are afforded hands-on experience with lab equipment, substances, and manipulation of variables in lab investigations to observe and measure the effect of these. In remote teaching, the physical hands-on experience is not possible. However, virtual hands-on tools can be used in place of physical tools for students to engage in learning during the explore phase. One example of such a tool can be virtual simulations. The sudden mass movement required many education stakeholders to explore the availability of virtual resources for remote teaching. Some examples include

learning management systems (BlackBoard, Canvas, Moodle), while there are also synchronous teaching technology applications (Zoom, Microsoft Teams, nearpod, Padlet), in addition to game-based learning applications such as Kahoot and online simulations (PhET, Gizmo, CloudLabs STEM) to name a few.

#### **3.2 Planning for student-centered learning**

When planning for student-centered learning this pedagogical approach focuses on three aspects to learning so that students (including students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds) are afforded multiple ways to interact with the content learned. One way is frequent experience opportunities with the content. Questions to consider are: (1) How will students interact with the content (visually, orally, videos, simulations)?; (2) What is the language of instruction and what language supports are afforded to CLD students who are not native speakers of a majority language? and (3) What are the intended conceptual and linguistic outcomes that are expected? A response to question three can be addressed by the specific formulation of content and language objectives to determine supports required to answer questions one and two. Technology is then utilized as a tool for exposing students to content and the use of virtual platforms for actively engaging students in the content to produce content and language outcomes. One of the greatest challenges as all educators moved to remote instruction in early 2020 was engaging students. One affordance in learning how to navigate this challenge is the growth in technology literacy and professional development for effective remote instruction that engages students. Thus, a central component when planning a lesson is to consider the specific content and language objectives that can be observed and measured during instruction and what technology platforms and applications will support students' interaction with the content and language to participate in disciplinary language use about the content via multiple modes of communication. Since explanations is the genre (text) of choice in this pedagogical approach. The author will describe the structural and grammatical features of science explanations for teacher planning.

#### **3.3 Science explanations**

As previously mentioned, one way to distinguish between the structural features of two common forms of explanations is by considering whether they describe a process or whether they describe a cause-effect relationship about science phenomena. Process or sequential explanations serve as intentional linguistic scaffolding for causal explanations. Thus, in science instructional design one might consider, what processes students will be learning in a lesson. One common type of process can be cycles, as in the water, or carbon dioxide cycle. Another type of process can be chemical processes (e.g., condensation, precipitation, evaporation, chemical changes, etc.) Let us take one content and learning objective as an example of the approach offered in this chapter.

Content objective: students will identify chemical changes in a chemical reaction.

Language objective: students will explain why the chemical changes occurred.

For the content objective, identification of chemical changes involves identifying chemical processes (e.g., rotting, burning, rusting, etc.). Taking the example of the

burning of sugar, one can observe that there are specific observations that can be made when burning sugar (color change, temperature change, phase change, etc.). A sequential explanation may include the observations made when heat was applied to sugar. One example of a sequential explanation may be the following:

Sequential explanation:

*Heat was applied to a container that contained sugar (test tube). The sugar appeared white and in solid (granulated) form. The sugar started smoking. It is easy to observe that the smoking is indicating a change in temperature. The sugar started turning brown or burning. The white solid became a brown and thick liquid.*

The underlined portion of the above explanation is one way to measure the outcomes intended by the content objective (i.e., burning). The language objective now requires a causal explanation, which can be a sequential explanation plus a causal component. Notice that the sequential explanation offers a sequence of events of how the burning of sugar occurred. A causal component would require answering why the chemical process of burning occurred. In this case the increase in heat (cause) resulted in the formation of caramelized sugar (effect). One commonly used causal explanation framework utilized in science teaching and learning is the *Claims, Evidence, Reasoning* (CER) framework proposed in [9]. The CER framework supports instructional planning for teaching through the use of science explanations by scaffolding the explore and explain phases in the instructional process to provide students with opportunities to generate claims (which can be an answer to a question, or a conclusion drawn), opportunities to make or measure observations as evidence in support of their claim, and opportunities to justify why the evidence supports their claim through the application of scientific principles. In the above example, one applicable scientific principle can be that whenever there is a chemical change a chemical reaction results in the formation of a new substance with a different structure and different chemical/physical properties (i.e., started with granulated sugar or sucrose, the chemical change of burning resulted in the transformation of sucrose into caramel).
