Transforming Multilingual Education: Integrating Language and STEM for Inclusive Learning with Beth Skelton

Unlock the transformative power of multilingual education and STEM integration as we explore how language can revolutionize learning and create more inclusive and equitable educational experiences for all students.

This week's guest is global consultant and author Beth Skelton. Brought together by Steve Spangler and Science in the Rockies, we quickly discovered so many ways that our work in language, literacy, and STEM overlaps. Join us as we delve into innovative approaches to multilingual education. 

Discover how Beth's journey from teaching German to advising educators worldwide has shaped her vibrant perspective on multilingualism as an invaluable asset. We explore insights from her co-authored book, Long-Term Success for Experienced Multilinguals, which challenges traditional views and highlights the potential of integrating language with STEM education. This episode underscores the importance of professional development and offers practical strategies for educators to effectively incorporate language learning into subjects like math, science, and social studies, benefiting both multilingual learners and native speakers alike.

Chapters:

0:00: Empowering Multilingual Learners Through Language highlights the importance of explicit language instruction to support multilingual and native speakers alike.

11:21 Teaching Language in STEM Education explores the integration of language development into STEM subjects and the critical need for professional development for educators. Learn how hands-on activities framed with appropriate language structures enhance students' understanding and communication skills.

18:39 Enhancing Language Development Through Research and Practice dives into the practical application of language development research through systemic functional linguistics. Beth shares insights from her work with teachers and students, emphasizing inquiry-based learning and explicit language instruction. 

Links: 

Beth Skelton's Co-Authored Books: Putting it Together and Long-Term Success for Experienced Multilinguals 

Beth Skelton's Website and Resources 

Science in the Rockies with Steve Spangler 

How do you enrich your teaching through the integration of multilingualism and STEM? Share your ideas below.

Transcript

00:02 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
So you know that feeling when you happen to be standing in a line and you meet somebody who turns out to be a soulmate or perhaps a long-lost sister. That happened to me this summer. I was at Steve Spangler's Science in the Rockies and I had the great good fortune of meeting Beth Skelton of meeting Beth Skelton. She is a world-renowned presenter. She does professional development and this woman knows how to really frame experience with significance, and the work that she's done with English language learners is just amazing. So I am so excited that I was able to talk her into being on the Adventures in Learning podcast with us today and we're going to just have a wonderful conversation. So, Beth, welcome to the show. 

00:51 - Beth Skelton (Guest)
Oh, Diane, thank you for what a beautiful introduction, because the feeling was absolutely mutual when I got to meet Dr Diane at Science in the Rockies with Steve. Thank you so much for having me on. 

01:03 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
It's going to be an adventure, it is so that folks at home have a sense of who you are. Rockies with Steve. Thank you so much for having me on. It's going to be an adventure, it is so the folks at home have a sense of who you are. Can you describe your adventures in learning for us a little bit about what you do and how? 

01:14 - Beth Skelton (Guest)
you got there? Sure, at this stage in my career, I am a presenter, a coach and a consultant, and I focus on creating equitable learning experiences for all the multilingual learners that we work with around the globe, and that multilingual learner label really is an asset space label. These students come to us in the US or anywhere in the world where they're learning with multiple languages, and the world has become super global and transient, and so, whether I'm working in Sweden, in a state school in Sweden where Swedish is the language of instruction, but they have immigrants coming in from all over the world as well, they're trying to make sure that students are acquiring the language of instruction. The same thing happens in the US, where we have students coming in again from all over the world and they're learning in English and it's not, maybe, their primary language. So that's the work that I'm doing now. 

02:14
How I got there is really a lifelong journey. I first became interested in languages as early as I know. I grew up with my grandmother who had immigrated from Germany, and so I heard German in the household a little bit. It was not my first language, but it was certainly in my conscious. And then, when I first traveled to Germany at the age of 14, I didn't speak and I didn't understand and I realized the power that language and culture had to connect us with each other and to expand the world and that kind of became my mission. I started out as a German teacher and then very quickly went on and started to work with English language learners in US and international schools. So that's, in a nutshell, kind of how I got to where I am and then moved into professional development because I saw the need that there was to support educators who are working with multilingual learners who may or may not have had any background or experience in it in their training. 

03:19 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
So that's often it really is just a footnote in our education training, unfortunately. 

03:26
And I love the idea that you're looking at it from a multi-language or a multilingual approach, because that is so powerful and empowering. And the book is amazing If you notice, I have so many dog-eared pages on it because Beth has co-written a book called Long-Term Success for Experienced Multilinguals and this book really changed the way I thought about the work I was doing, because I work in terms of helping teachers connect literacy and STEM and it struck me when I saw you present this summer that we really need to be very deliberate in the way that we offer these opportunities and it benefits everybody, whether you're the student who saw you present this summer, that we really need to be very deliberate in the way that we offer these opportunities and it benefits everybody. Whether you're the student who is working to acquire the language of instruction or you're trying to help students who are already fluently speaking English. They all benefit from these approaches to using vocabulary and labeling things and just really being explicit in your instruction. I loved this book. 

04:26 - Beth Skelton (Guest)
Well, thank you so much. That's exciting and the book is really for all learners. The group that we're targeting with the book we call Experience Multilinguals. These are the students that are like actually the largest group of students in our public schools in the US in the secondary. So about 80% in some places not all schools are students who were born in the US or they're students who started in kindergarten or first grade and they are still classified as English language learners by the time they hit sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth grade. So they have a lot of experience in our system. They socially sound great, they know how to use lockers, they get the cafeteria. They're not newcomers, they're not what we generally think of as English language learners, and they understand the system, but they still need explicit instruction in academic language. 

05:21
And, as you were mentioning this summer, steve Spangler for those of your listeners who know Steve he provides these amazing experiences that kids. They're just hooked, and so are adults. There's a plug for science in the Rockies, so we're all just hooked with the experience. And then what I try to do is bring in that language so that I can explain the experience, so I can share the experience, so that I can tell the parents, for example, one of his books like, or one of the things that Steve says if you make it to the kitchen table, right, you win Exactly. But if you make it to the dinner table and you don't have the language to describe what you just learned about Bernoulli's principles while you were blowing the toilet paper all over the audience, then it's limited in what you can do, and so I'm adding that explicit language piece, and I would suggest that all students are academic language learners. That's that A-L-L. A colleague of mine, sarah Otto, uses that phrase a lot that we are all allss myself. 

06:22 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
I love that. Well, that makes so much sense to me. So let's take a couple of examples, because you sort of alluded to one that you used with Steve. If I were an educator or even a parent who's looking for ways to sort of take that experience and wrap it in language in a way that it has significance, how do we do that so that we are being really thoughtful in the way that we're crafting our instruction or our conversation? 

06:53 - Beth Skelton (Guest)
Gosh, there's so many examples and we can stay in the STEM world, and I can even give the example of Steve if anyone's seen him on Ellen blowing the toilet paper over with the leaf blower. He's really modeling Bernoulli's principles and he's modeling principles of lift. So to explain that, you're going to need words like air pressure and lift, and you're going to have to know how to use increased and decreased, and so it's sentence frames that are actually complex, like when the air pressure decreases, right, and so it's a complex structure that you're putting together in order to explain this principle that allows the toilet paper to fly. And what was so interesting is that the early childhood educators had their way that they would have their students explain it. That may or may not include that same vocabulary, but would probably include a complex sentence structure, right, and that the high school teachers, in that same experiment, had higher expectations of the vocabulary and the sentence structure and how to link one idea to another using phrases like therefore or causing lift. You know something to that effect that they could do the linking. So, regardless of the level of development of the child, the language can also increase in development, but we can still hold high expectations. 

08:23
So I know you work a lot with early childhood and, let's say, parents, you're cooking at home with your child, right? You are mixing the egg with a whisk. You're going to use terms like whisk and mix and beat, and you know harder or faster, and so you're giving comparative language as well. You're putting together sentences, you're asking the child questions that are around that activity that you're doing together in the normal everyday life of living with your child, right? So building that language together is really powerful and helpful in any language that you speak in the home or multiple languages that you speak in the home. So we always encourage the parents to be telling the stories, to be doing the activities in their strongest language, and that transfers in the classroom as well. 

09:19 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
And that makes so much sense to me. I mean, my language skills are predominantly English and so I have so much respect for families that are speaking other languages. Like, in many ways, you are so much smarter than I am and I envy that skill, and so I know there was a time when, as educators, you were like English only. You know, and I love the fact that you're looking at what I think we've evolved to see which is it's really important that you embrace that dominant language and that you celebrate it. 

09:52 - Beth Skelton (Guest)
You know what you just said is actually one of the things that causes my heart to hurt. You know what you just said is actually one of the things that causes my heart to hurt. I've had my master's degree in teaching English to speakers of other languages for over 25 years and just prior to that we were still saying to parents you know, use English at home to help your child learn, and like doctors that take an oath to first do no harm. That was something that did harm and so it's something I'm really pushing back against all the time. It's use the language that you are most comfortable with. 

10:29
Even if parents aren't yet literate in the language they speak, they can still teach their child a lot about how language works. They can do the childhood rhymes so in Spanish. If you're doing those kinds of things at home, you are teaching the foundations of reading that the student will need when they come to learn to read in English and or in Spanish, or together both of those languages. So we really encourage parents to use their strongest language and speak to the children and tell stories to the children and narrate what you're doing for the early childhood. So that's really setting the foundation and thank goodness we've learned more and the profession has grown beyond that poor advice that we used to give earlier. 

11:20 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Well, and it makes sense. You know, when you know better, you're supposed to do better, right? And I think that that's something that we need to make sure that all educators know, especially if you've been teaching for 10, 15, 20 years, 30 years, and the world has shifted. That's part of why it's so important that we have professional development that you're able to travel and teach and share. So talk about the professional development you offer. Where do you go? What do you do? 

11:52 - Beth Skelton (Guest)
I work all over, as I mentioned, whether it's all over the United States or also with international schools, and I focus a lot on the general educator because, while English language development specialists are absolutely critical, they're usually the ones that have the training. They know what they're doing, they have the skill set. That's what they learned how to do. They know what they're doing, they have the skill set. That's what they learned how to do. And they are only with these multilingual learners for a very small percentage of the day. They may get them for 30 minutes or 40 minutes it's not a lot of the day and so my focus is generally on the elementary teachers, the general educators, and then at the secondary, the math teacher, science teacher, social studies teacher. And that's why, when I was invited to come to Science and the Rockies and share how do we now frame this experience in the science classroom to teach language that's one of my favorite things to do is to take this hands-on experience. This, you know, they've just built something. For example, we'll take one of your literature. 

13:00
Right, they've just done the three little pigs and they have built their house out of whatever materials. How do you now add that language development piece to all of that creativity and fun so that kids can tell each other what they just did or write about it as a follow-up? So that's really where my focus is is to take what amazing teachers are doing in math and science and social studies and language arts and say great, now let's teach the language. The students need to explain it, to justify which solution they chose and why they chose to build it this way. So all of those different functions of language have different language structures attached to them, and that's what I like to bring to the content. Experts bring them that language lens, we'll say the focus on language at the elementary level and at the secondary level. So I do a lot of that kind of work as well. 

13:58 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Well, and that's so powerful. I mean to be able to work with kids on interactive writing, where you're scaffolding and modeling. It's a great opportunity to be able to introduce that language and sort of the sentence stems and how would you do this? And it's not stifling creativity On the contrary, it's giving them the vocabulary they need to be able to jump and go. 

14:23 - Beth Skelton (Guest)
And a lot of times it's giving them the thinking yeah, it's like if I'm asking you to compare these two things, you may understand the concept of compare, but if I don't know that I'm using a bigger than greater than less than if I don't know that structure, I'm going to have a hard time expressing my compare or my contrast. And so it's actually framing the type of thinking I want to go on, but not telling you what to think. Here's the structure for thinking in order to justify or in order to explain why right, or explain how you do something. And so each of these prompts that we're asking our students in the classroom after the experience, each of those prompts has a certain language structure. That sort of goes with it. 

15:13
And that's what I'm trying to bring to teachers. And often what I ask them is you know, I don't teach sixth grade science what would a sixth grade answer to that prompt sound like? Right, and I'm not listening just for the content, I'm actually listening for the how they're expressing it, what's the language behind it. And then I know how I can support the students so that they can start to sound like a scientist at sixth grade a multilingual learner and an advanced multilingual learner. 

15:43 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
You know may not be getting the services, may look perfectly like everybody else in the classroom, but may need that little extra. 

16:06 - Beth Skelton (Guest)
Push you have just nailed one of the biggest issues and what I work with a lot of teachers on. So I'll give an example from my experience with a physics teacher and again he was a physics teacher like we all want. All of the materials were out on the table and the task was that the students were going to design their own tool to measure the focal point of a convex lens. So that was their task. They had to create their own tool to measure that focal point. And at the end of the class I came in in the middle I didn't even see the teacher because the kids were so engaged. They were, all you know, speaking in about three different languages. They were sharing tape and glue and cardboard and they were cutting and they were using every language in their toolbox. And at the end the teacher said hey, could you explain what you learned about finding the focal length? No-transcript, and the teacher knew exactly what the student was referring to and said great. 

17:14 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
And I didn't know what the student was talking about, because it was. It gets closer to what and what's it, and I had no idea, right, I wouldn't have known we talked about it afterward and, to the teacher's credit, acknowledge that the student got the content. 

17:32 - Beth Skelton (Guest)
And that's what we want and there's a dual job of all educators is not just the content is comprehensible, but also that I can talk about that content, I can share that content with others, I can write about it, I can read about it. Right, I can express my understanding of it in a way that you would understand, even though you weren't in the room. That I would understand, even though I'm not a physics person, that they have that language and language beyond just vocabulary but also the sentence structures. We talked about it afterward and the teacher came back, put the vocabulary on the board and it's like when the light source is closer to the convex lens, the image right appears larger on the screen, something to that effect Right, what does that mean? How do we put that together? And that really set me off on this path where I realized I had co-planned that lesson with the teacher and realized even I didn't anticipate the language development needs of the students. 

18:35 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
That's really cool, so that's actually a great segue. Talk about your research in your books, like tell us a little bit about what you've learned and some of your big takeaways. 

18:46 - Beth Skelton (Guest)
The word research seems like a big, big word. My research quote unquote is really the experiences I have in the classroom working with teachers. At this point, my own experiences working with students and then a ton of reading from true experts in the field of systemic functional linguistics is the buzzword right now in our field of language development, and so I do a lot of reading of their work and follow them closely and then try to apply that to the classroom. So that's really the background of where a lot of the book comes from, and my co-author, Tan Nguyen, is in the classroom doing this every day, working with students and watching the results of adding these kinds of supports for students focused on language through the different content areas that he co-teaches with and that he teaches on the ground. So is that? 

19:45
what you were asking about what I'm doing with that. 

19:47 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
No, and I think that makes a lot of sense, because often I think there is a disconnect for us as educators between the research that's out there and what we're doing in the classroom every day, and that's where I think it's so important to have somebody who is able to translate it into everyday speak where we can actually take and go. Oh, I could do that In my next read aloud with kids, as we're talking about the three little pigs. I can introduce the words construction or greater than less than heavier, lighter, you know force, you know air pressure, whatever the words are that you want to get across. But I'm able to translate from the research. You know, I know from the research. This is what it says, this is how I can use it, and I think that's where your work is really valuable. And so I'm wondering are there like big takeaways that you would want educators or families to know from sort of all that great reading you're doing, like if there were three things you'd want them to do right now? 

20:49 - Beth Skelton (Guest)
That's a great one. One keep giving students lots of different experiences, whether that's an experience in the home, lot of times it's out in the world. And as the students are having those experiences, we are asking the questions but also supplying the words and the language, the structures that they need to express their curiosity. So how to ask questions. We're helping our students and our children out in the world, whether it's families or teachers, to ask those questions and we're also giving them the language they need to express what they're seeing, thinking, feeling as they're observing the world. So it would be provide the experience, provide the explicit language support that students need to express that and encourage them to ask lots of questions themselves. Express that and encourage them to ask lots of questions themselves. So just through asking the question and again, that can be in any language they're going to get more information, more input, more they're building their own background. So creating curiosity, cultivating that curiosity and I think that's something that doesn't always happen in every classroom every day is that it's a lot of here. Just absorb what I'm giving you, rather than that true kind of inquiry based learning and generating questioning With our multilingual learners, with questioning, I actually have to teach them the structure of how to ask a question, and there might have to be supports in place for that the question words, and then why is, why does, why, might, how, could, right, like the verb comes next, like we actually provide the structure so that I can ask the question in the language that most people around me are going to understand, and not that you can't ask it in another language, but we're teaching both the content and the language of instruction at the same time. 

22:54
So those are three things I hope that that makes sense. 

22:57 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
No, that all makes total sense to me, and so our and that kind of ties into what I do in terms of adventures and learning as well. You know, part of why I call what I do the adventures in learning is I want people to see our education as a joyful place of discovery, and I think that we help kids do that when we're able to pair those hands-on experiences with literature, with very explicit language support, and I think all of those things pair so beautifully together and they're fun. I mean, that's what makes learning joyful is you're bringing that sort of sense of inquiry across the curriculum. It's not just during our science time or during our recess time or during playtime. It can happen in any subject, any time paired with the explicit language instruction. 

23:56 - Beth Skelton (Guest)
I do experiment. Oh, spoiler alert to anyone who's not been in a workshop with me. One of the experiments that I often do is that I get adults together and I give them a challenge task, something easy like create a structure out of paper that's going to support your laptop two inches above the table like something pretty easy, right, and they get a little bit of tape and that's it. And they're working together and while that's happening, I have what I call my research assistants writing down, scripting, transcribing all of the language that they're hearing. And even adults, and even with STEM teachers, I get language like crumple it, fold it, put it there no, not that way. And just hardly any complete sentences. No academic language at all. No one saying things like let's distribute the weight equally using columns, which will be strong. We don't hear any of that, even though they are STEM teachers, because I don't explicitly expect it or ask them to. 

25:00
And so we go to social language, which is a piece of the language spectrum. There's nothing wrong with it, it's just now. If I want to teach the language explicitly, in addition to the content of weight distribution in that lesson, I'm going to have to do something different. And then I come in after that experience and the research assistant reads back the language that they heard and the teachers are just cracking up. They're like, oh, I sound like a five-year-old and I was like, well, you sound like social language and that's okay. That's a piece of how we communicate and let's move it along that continuum toward more sounding like a STEM teacher or a scientist. And then we redo it and it's hilarious, right, it's how we function on that continuum of language, but it's now about it being explicit. 

25:48 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
See, and I grow every time I talk to you, because I've been doing a very similar exercise with the three pigs, using index cards, and I do it both with kids and adults and you just reminded me to make sure that I'm being explicit in the language. 

26:03 - Beth Skelton (Guest)
I'm like this is good and I'm like I might even steal your idea about the research assistant, especially with adults, because I think it would be good for them to hear what language they're using and what they aren't Right and so unless we're all just conscious of that language development as a piece of what we're doing all day long, we just go back to the I don't know, I would say further on the social end of that spectrum of, you know, continuum of language, we default to what's easy Yep, yep and it's not necessarily what's going to move us to that next level. 

26:40
Exactly, and one reason why many of our students are not exiting quote unquote the English language development program. So in every state in the US, students have to take a language proficiency test every year and if their score on that language proficiency test isn't high enough, they still are required to be in the program and have services. And that is who we wrote the book for, and it's these little tweaks that make a difference for those students to exit the program. 

27:11 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
That makes so much sense to me. So I'm going to drop links to the books and to you in the show notes for sure, Cause I want people to be able to reach out and see what you're doing Before we go. What brings you joy. 

27:25 - Beth Skelton (Guest)
Oh, there's so much. I live in Western Colorado and what brings me joy is all things nature. I love to backpack and hike. We garden. My husband grows all of the food we eat all year, and this time of year I don't know when people are listening to this, but it is currently middle of August and the garden is so bountiful and that brings me joy and it's acknowledging what the earth gives us and the beauty that is all around us. I think that's my wonder and joy and something that I appreciate every single day, as well as all those people in the world I get to share it with. 

28:07 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
And Beth, you bring me joy. I'm so glad that Steve brought us together and that I gained you as a friend, so thank you so much for joining us on the Adventures in Learning podcast today. It has been such a treat and, seriously, if you're an educator out there and you want to learn more about how to do explicit language instruction, find the book. Follow Beth. You couldn't ask for better hands to help you out. 

28:32 - Beth Skelton (Guest)
Thank you so much, Diane. What a joy it's. 

Keywords: Multilingual Education, Language Development, STEM Education, Professional Development, Academic Language, Systemic Functional Linguistics, Inquiry-Based Learning, Explicit Language Instruction, Equitable Learning Experiences, Multilingual Learners, Native Speakers, Communication Skills, Hands-On Activities, Academic Research, Classroom Practice, Language Support, Joyful Learning Environment, Friendship, Language Instruction Skills