Using Language as a Social Semiotic Tool in Virtual Science Instruction

This chapter offers a pedagogical approach for teachers in virtual science teaching that creates virtual hands-on practice for culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students to ‘do science’ and ‘talk science’. This chapter features the use of technology applications where elementary- and middle-school teachers create opportunities for students to interact with online simulations, make observations in science experiments, generate claims, gather evidence and reason about concepts to construct oral/written scientific explanations. Scientific explanations are a common discourse practice that scientific communities engage in by interacting with science phenomena during inquiry investigations and present their contributions to science knowledge. The chapter focuses on the practice of constructing explanations utilizing one remote instructional lesson design that would engage teachers of CLD students in online instructional planning. The sociocultural theoretical constructs of mediation and zone of proximal development (ZPD) inform the instructional methods used to create opportunities for CLD students to make sense of science phenomena. Sociolinguistic theory informs the use of language as a social semiotic tool to communicate sense-making. Sociolinguistic theory also guides explicit focus on the structural features of science language that inform language scaffolding and meaningful activity planning intended to promote content-specific language output (e.g. science explanations) by CLD students.