Volume 1
Summer 2002
ESL Science
Learning ESL through Life Science Content.
This month, the Living Earth examines echinoderms, animals with radial symmetry and spiny skins. You may know them better as starfish, sand dollars, sea urchins, and sea cucumbers. One fascinating thing about echinoderms is that most of them have five-sided radial symmetry, which you will only see if you observe closely
. Echinoderms (web version)
Echinoderms (print version)
Language Arts through Space Science
Other Worlds is a reading comprehension series based on articles written for Nasa's Space Place. This month's article is on LISA, the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna. Read the article.
The Language of Science - Patterns that are Useful for Scientific Writing.
This month's handout is on definitions. Often when we do science we need to define things. Defining things is a tricky task as Plato found out from Diogenes when Plato tried to define what a human is. One common way to define things is to use relative clauses with that. Plato defined humans as animals that have two legs and no fur or hair. Diogenes pointed out the problem with this definition. Students also learn to classify animals according to their scientific grouping: mammal, bird, reptile . . .
Defintions Using Relative Clauses Handout Teachers Comments
Language and Mathematics -The vocabulary needed to talk Math.
Math is the language of science. This section is for teaching the vocabulsry needed to talk about mathematics. This month's handout is on Finding Maximums. Students calculate the maximum number of potions that they can make in Snape's class with the number of ingredients that they have.
Key language points:
Maximum
The maximum number of ______ is _______.
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