The Energy Pyramid Unit: Writing a Language Objective That Does Real Work
Ms. Okafor teaches seventh-grade science at a suburban middle school. Her third-period class has 26 students: 9 current English learners (two at WIDA Level 1, four at Level 2, two at Level 3, one at Level 4) plus three students who exited EL status last year. The next unit covers trophic levels and energy pyramids. Her draft plan is a 20-minute slide lecture, silent reading of the textbook section, and a worksheet asking students to 'describe the relationship between producers, consumers, and decomposers and explain what happens to energy at each level.' On the last unit test, current ELs averaged 41% while non-ELs averaged 84%, and several ELs left the written responses blank even though they had answered correctly during the lab. Ms. Okafor has one 45-minute co-planning block per week with the ESL teacher and no bilingual paraprofessional. The science department expects every student to complete the grade-level lab investigation.
1. Ms. Okafor writes the content objective 'Students will explain how energy decreases at each trophic level.' Write an aligned language objective and justify why it functions as a language objective rather than a restated content objective or a list of activities.
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A defensible language objective names the discourse function and the linguistic resources students need to show their reasoning: 'Students will explain energy transfer through trophic levels by constructing cause-and-effect sentences using because, so, and which means (e.g., "Only about 10 percent of energy passes to the next level because the rest is used for life processes or lost as heat").'
Why this works: it keeps the same cognitive demand as the content objective - students still have to explain energy loss - so it is aligned, not a watered-down substitute. It is a language objective because what it adds is the how of the explanation in English: the causal connectors and the vocabulary of transfer and loss. It is not an activity ('complete the worksheet'), and it is not a content objective in disguise because it introduces no new science concept. It is teachable in one lesson, observable in student talk and writing, and usable as a success criterion. The WIDA key language use is Explain. It also gives Ms. Okafor something concrete to model and listen for: she can check whether the causal chain is accurate and connected, not just whether the right nouns appear.
2. Identify two scaffolds that preserve the cognitive demand of the energy-pyramid task while making its language manageable, explain the mechanism of each, and name one commonly recommended scaffold you would reject in this situation and why.
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Scaffold 1: two-tier sentence frames anchored to the diagram. Tier A: 'The ___ gets energy from the ___.' Tier B: 'Energy moves from ___ to ___ because ___.' Mechanism: the frame supplies syntax the student cannot yet produce independently, so working memory goes to the science relationship rather than to word order and articles. Students choose the tier, which keeps the reasoning demand intact.
Scaffold 2: a labeled pyramid plus a bilingual cognate bank (producer/productor, consumer/consumidor, decomposer/descomponedor, energy/energía) and organism cards to place on trophic levels. Mechanism: it makes the abstract concept visible and lets students rehearse the reasoning physically and orally before writing, which is exactly the bridge Level 1 and 2 students need.
Rejected: rewriting the text at a much lower reading level so that it states the answer, or having students copy definitions from the glossary. Those lower cognitive demand, not just language demand - the student no longer has to reason about where the energy goes. Also reject round-robin oral reading: it produces decoding performance rather than comprehension and exposes newcomers without building meaning.
3. How should Ms. Okafor gather valid evidence of the two Level 1 students' content learning during and at the end of the unit? Justify the choices in terms of what the assessment is supposed to measure.
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The construct is 'understands that energy decreases across trophic levels and can account for where it goes.' Written English is not part of that construct, so a written English response adds construct-irrelevant variance and will systematically understate what Level 1 students know - which is plausibly part of what happened on the last test.
During the unit: a short conference in which the student arranges organism cards into a pyramid, draws arrows, and explains orally; exit tickets that are diagram completion plus one frame sentence; an observation checklist with three criteria (correct order, direction of arrows, explanation of loss). Accept L1 in planning and oral explanation, with English labels added.
End of unit: a choice board - labeled diagram with oral explanation, sorting task, or short constructed response with frames - scored on a content rubric (accuracy of the energy concept) kept separate from a language rubric. That separation matters: the science grade should reflect science, and the language data should feed ELD instruction. If the oral explanation is accurate, that is valid evidence of the content standard even when the paragraph is not. Keep the evidence in the portfolio so later placement or referral decisions rest on data rather than impressions.