ELL Supports Description and Resources
Description of Lesson:
This science discovery lesson explores how a plant drinks water by way of capillary action.
There are multiple representations of capillary action in this single lesson including putting
carnations, celery, and Napa cabbage in blue water, putting paper towel in red and yellow water,
cutting open celery with blue capillaries, and students drinking through a straw.
Objectives:
-General students: Students will explain the process of capillary action by way of written
explanation in supporting or rejecting original hypothesis.
-ELL students: Students will show the process of capillary action by drawing a representation of
what happens in a plant during capillary action, labeling plant parts using a word bank.
-ELL Language objective: Students will be able to identify by drawing and/or labeling: stem,
capillary, straw, celery, carnation, flower, (Napa) cabbage, food coloring, leaves, and capillary
action
How the lesson supports ELL learners in general lesson:
-This discovery lesson is a two hour long, multi-tiered exploration of capillary action. Students
are all exploring the concept that water is “sucked up” by a plant by observing what happens
when a plant is put into blue water for a few hours and what happens when paper towel has one
end in colored water and the other end in an empty cup. Even without speaking or
understanding the language, students can enjoy the experiments by watching visuals and
physical representations from the anticipatory set through the experiments.
Extra Support for ELL Learners:
My original design for this lesson does not support ELL learners during the written portions as I
ask students to describe in detail what they predict and describe in detail at the end what
capillary action is.
Instead of requiring a recording sheet such as this one:
I will ask my BICS students to represent their predictions in the same format as the previous
discovery lesson:
Hypothesis: guess what will happen to the plants.
Draw what you think will happen in the box. Label
your drawing.
Word bank: carnation, napa cabbage, celery,
food coloring, blue, water, roots, stem, leaves
Students will also be asked to draw their representation of capillary action at the end of the
lesson in the same format shown above, given a word bank that includes capillary action as
well.
As for the CALP learners, they will be asked to write their predictions given their language ability
in the same format at the general education students since the provided recording sheet uses
simple language: “I predict…Why I think this….What happened”. As a resource for them, I will
give them a vocabulary card that the general students will not need for this lesson.
Prediction: guess what will happen
Capillary: like a straw inside a plant
Carnation: the white flower we are using
Napa cabbage: The lettuce we are using
Capillary Action: When the water is pulled into
and up the capillary of the plant because the
water sticks to the inside of the capillary
BICS students will also be given a sheet that helps them represent what is happening before,
during, and after the experiment: