In this segment, the shared experience is a video that shows falling stars. Students are engaged and taking notes in their science notebooks about what they have observed. Luz circulates around the room, encouraging students to write what they are able to and to draw a picture if they get stuck. Notice, Luz does not share any sentence frames with the students or insist that they record their observations in a particular way. Instead, she encourages them to think about what they saw and observed and make note of those observations.

After watching the video and taking notes in their science notebooks, students meet with their triads to discuss their observations. The shared experience of watching the falling star videos serves as an equalizer so everyone comes into the group with something to share. This is particularly important for the English learners in the class as the video provides them with a concrete experience to talk about and refer to. In her journal, Michelle wrote her thoughts in Spanish and then was able to share in English with the support of her partner, who affirmed what she said. If the class had started with a simple prompt of what do you know about falling stars? Michelle probably wouldn’t have understood or been able to participate, but the video gives her a shared experience to talk about with her group. Helen’s group also engaged in a rich discussion sharing what they noticed, what surprised them, and their wonderings and hypotheses. Everyone has an entry point and a common experience to talk about, instead of it becoming a one-sided conversation where only students with more prior knowledge share. Because everyone is able to contribute, despite their English proficiency level, the English learners in the classroom are seen as important and contributing members of the classroom’s learning community.

In this segment of the video, students write their questions down on post-it notes. This question writing is strategically placed after the groups have shared their observations about the video. The talk that occurs during this sharing is important for the generating and writing of questions. Many of the students have already verbalized their questions in their triads, in essence practicing them before writing them down.

In this segment, students share their questions in written form with their triads. This gives students the opportunity to practice asking their question out loud before sharing their questions in front of the whole class. Some students, like Michelle, ask their question in Spanish, while other students ask their questions with imperfect English. Regardless of the language proficiency level, all students are given the opportunity to share their questions with their peers.

During this segment, students share their questions with the whole class. Luz helps the students organize their questions into groups. She asks how their questions are connected and encourages them to make connections between their questions but also to create new categories when needed. Luz gives everyone a chance to share their question and places their questions on the class chart. Omar, a newcomer, shares his question and Luz helps to clarify his question by recasting his language for him. Michelle, another newcomer, shares her question in Spanish. Luz repeats her question in Spanish and then repeats it again in English. This gives Michelle the opportunity to hear her question in English. Both Rafael and Michelle may not have shared their questions in front of the whole class without the explicit support and confirmation that use of their primary language and imperfect English were acceptable.

In this last segment, Luz and Sarah discuss the first video. Luz reflects on how important the video is in creating a context for all of the students to draw from. She reiterates how important it is for the students to have an opportunity to imagine. This process of imagining about the video allows the students to ask really big questions. Luz reflects on how important it is for all students to have the opportunity to ask big questions and not be expected to only ask the questions that teachers and schools are looking for. Luz also reflects on why these kinds of wonder-generating experiences are important for ELs like Michelle. She points out that the experience is critical for both her science learning and her language development Luz describes how initially Michelle is approximating the questions and language that she hears from her peers but that over time this practice will allow Michelle to generate her own questions that reflect her own developing ideas. Luz ends her commentary by articulating why it is so important that all students, regardless of language proficiency, have the opportunity to share their ideas and questions. This is a critical component to indicating to both the student and the classroom community that everyone has the intellectual capacity to contribute to the meaning making in the classroom.