Seventh International Conference on Immersion and Dual Language Education

Strand I: Pedagogy & Assessment

Not language specific

Elementary (K-5)

Immersion education demands that students use language other than English to access rigorous academic content and to function within a variety of academic and social contexts. Providing students with scaffolded linguistic supports plays a key role in helping students complete instructional tasks as well as build their language proficiency. Recent publications by Quinlan et al (2012) and Zwiers (2014) in which they identify specific academic language functions were the basis for the creation of a "Language Function and Sentence Stem Chart" which serves as an initial resource for immersion teachers to use in scaffolding academic language across content areas. Regular and strategic use of function-based sentence frames can help students reach grade level understanding of a topic as well as develop strategies they will need to read relevant texts, interpret complex sentences, as well as link these to diagrams, data charts, and equations across content areas.