Teaching Physics to ESL learners

All subject teachers are language teachers!

I had always heard and read about this in the IB documents , but implementing it to the core in the context of China. My recent experience of taking WUIS , China through their IB DP Authorization had suddenly thrown a different insight into unpacking the IB documents as compared to my stint with the evaluation phase in India. The Language policy and its implementation seems to be the prime focus in the school in relevance to China. Being a new school, it caters to chinese students from the national board who have very limited grasp over English as a language of instruction as compared to my previous students in India. Here what is suprising is that both Indians and Chinese are ESL students.

The manner in which teaching and learning is happening in the DP physics classroom here is so different from  the classrooms in India where I had native or near native english speakers. Just reflecting on how my first unit is being taught here , where the development of language is so very imortant.

Integration of language in Physics, is a four-step process:

1)    activating background knowledge

2)    scaffolding for new learning input

3)    acquisition of new learning through practice

4)    demonstrating proficiency.

Today's lesson was hinted on identifying , reading and analyzing graphs- a basic introduction. I used desmos platform, my all time favourite to act as a platform and tool to nurture critical thinking. 

Activity 1: Students where given a function , y=2x and ask to generate a graph and describe the same in groups. What came out from the oral exercise was that the student cohort was weak in basic science vocabalary and the same was identified and posted on the wall..

Words like origin, intersection, gradient, y-intercept were not known or used by the students in English. This activity helped in activating background knowledge.

Activity 2

Next more equations where given on desmos and students where asked to compare and contrast between: y=2x. y=5x, y=-5x and so on. As they compared and elaborated their descriptions in sets of five sentences, they started using the identified and highlighted vocabalary with use.This activity helped students to scaffold for new learning input.