Leveraging Background Knowledge for Science Success: A Sheltered Instruction Observational Protocol and Next Generation Science Standards Framework

Science teachers can find it challenging to find a framework to bridge the gap between students' background knowledge and lesson objectives. I aimed to answer this question: how can science teachers use the Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol (SIOP) model framework to help students bridge the gap between background knowledge and scientific academic language and content. The literature highlights the importance of accessing this background knowledge, illustrating its potential to bridge students to advanced language and science content objectives. This paper and four-session professional development focus on: assessing and building background knowledge in students, Tier 2 and Tier 3 vocabulary to build academic language, the role of phenomena in the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) standards and finally, how the SIOP framework helps to bridge the gap between language and content objectives. This project frames how the application of the SIOP framework can empower science teachers to create lessons to enable all students to navigate the intersection of background knowledge and scientific discourse.