Chapter 1: Planetarium-Based Science Visualizations to Support Complex Science Learning for First-Year Middle and High School English Learners

To be successful in acquiring and communicating complex science understandings, students need to develop the ability to express complex relationships among scientific phenomena through oral and written modes (Bailey, Butler, LaFramenta, & Ong, 2004; Lee, 2005; Richardson Bruna, Vann, & Perales Escudero, 2007; Schleppegrell, 2001, 2004). This challenge is particularly daunting for newly arrived (newcomer), non-English-speaking students at the middle and high school levels when the language of instruction is English. These students perform “double the work of native English speakers in the countries’ middle and high schools” (Short & Boyson, 2012, p. 3) since they need to simultaneously develop proficiency in the academic language skills while studying the core academic content through the new language. The necessary language skills go beyond social, conversational mastery of the language to include high levels of academic English language skills.