Science City · Case 01Key Language Use: ExplainELD-SC · Language for ScienceAbout 20 minutes · Recommended grades 6-8
Silt in the River Garden
Students explain a cause-and-effect chain in an environmental system and state the physical limit of an engineering solution.
Share a direct link
Each link below configures the student player automatically and skips the setup screen:
Standards Architecture
WIDA alignment for practice
Aligned for classroom practice to the WIDA English Language Development Standards Framework, 2020 Edition. This is not an official WIDA score, ACCESS score, or proficiency level.
- Standard: Language for Science
- Key Language Use: explain
- Discourse: A scientific explanation that links storm sediment to reduced flow and distinguishes solid particles from dissolved substances.
- Sentence: Causal and contrastive sentences using because, consequently, so, and although.
- Word and phrase: sediment, filter, dissolved, intake, oxygen, flow rate, plant roots.
Instructional Guidance
Teaching notes
About 20 minutes. Recommended grades 6-8. Content area: science.
Lesson Objectives
- Explain a multi-step cause-and-effect mechanism using sensor data.
- State both what a physical filter accomplishes and what it cannot remove.
Pathway ScaffoldingGuided pathway provides causal sentence frames and a science word bank. Developing pathway offers optional causal starters. Independent pathway adds a conductivity sensor table.
Likely language demands
- Students may say the filter 'cleans everything' without distinguishing solid silt from dissolved salt.
- Students may state the symptom (wilting leaves) without linking it to clogged flow and root oxygen.
What independent performance looks like
Independent performance explains the full chain from storm runoff to clogged intake to low oxygen and names the dissolved-salt limit without frames.
Follow-up
- Five-minute reading practice on sensor data, then Science City adventure 2.