Energy in the Human Body incorporates many pedagogical components that are considered key for teaching Sheltered English or ESL as well as addressing multiple learning styles. Research has shown particular success in learning in students who are identified as learning disabled and on IEPs. The Energy in the Human Body curriculum employs strategies such as analogies, drawing to learn, discrepant questioning, and hands on activities that together provide a wide range of ways to engage students. At the same time it strives to avoid passive learning, while providing students with basic skills in communication and cooperative learning. Students are actively engaged in a process of co-construction, the process through which the teacher and the students collaborate to build and evaluate mental models of a target concept (Rea-Ramirez, 1998; Nunez-Oviedo, et al, 2002). Throughout the co-construction process, the teacher acts as a facilitator to help students first recognize their preconceptions about a topic, then to challenge their own ideas and make decisions about whether they are ready to modify or discard a conception as they build more and more complex mental models of energy in the body. In this way students, working in small groups, are taught, often through modeling, to own the questions and to use model based reasoning to arrive at deep conceptual understanding through participating in the learning activities that promote vocabulary and content/conceptual knowledge of science, social knowledge and skills, and actively participating in discussions, projects and activities. Rather than watching and listening only, students actively engage in oral and graphic predictions, explanations, and supportive evidence to challenge and develop both their own mental models and those of other students. This has been found to enhance the learning experience and access to learning for a diverse population of students.

Several strategies in the Energy in the Human Body Curriculum are aligned to research on teaching diverse populations. However, we have found that these strategies appear to be effective with all students regardless of ethnicity or learning ability. These include: Cooperative Learning, Instructional Conversation, Cognitively Guided Instruction, and Technology-Enriched Instruction.

Cooperative Learning is a major component of the Energy Curriculum, affording students opportunities to engage in shared learning, building on other's models, as well as challenging and defending their own models. In an atmosphere where all preconceptions are accepted as a natural starting point for constructed understanding, cooperative learning provides a low risk environment for sharing of ideas. After students discuss models in their small group, they show greater willingness and comfort in sharing group models with the whole class. In addition, students who initially defer to the student who is seen as always having the "right answer", soon become confident enough to challenge this student's model and ask for further explanation and evidence.

Instructional Conversation, "an extended discourse between the teacher and students" (Padron, et al 2002), according to August and Hakuta (1998) gives students "opportunities for extended dialogue in areas that have educational value as well as relevance for them." In the Energy project we refer to this discourse as co-construction, a process in which the teacher and student, through open-ended questions, discussion, student and teacher generated analogies, and argumentation, work together to construct mental models. The teacher uses open ended and often dissonance producing questions that stimulate the student to take a critical look at their conception and to begin to challenge that model, producing evidence and constructive argument to support their reasoning through an evolving model, not merely to defend the initial model. As students progress in their ability to engage in such discourse they show increasing ability to both reason with the model and to use the language of science.

Cognitively Guided Instruction deals with increasing metacognitive development in the student. In the Energy Curriculum students are made aware of learning strategies. That is, strategies are not merely something that is put upon them or done to them be the teacher. One example is the use of analogies. Students are actively encouraged as part of the curriculum to construct their own analogies for concepts. The reasons for using analogies, as well as their limitations, are pointed out. Throughout the curriculum students are introduced to the concept of mental models and how building on preconceptions is important to develop complex mental models that they can use in real life. Throughout the learning process students are encouraged to construct understanding, not to wait for the teacher to tell them the right answer. Learning how to learn is a key component in the project and students are actively taught the tools to aid them in this learning, tools that it is hoped students will take with them to new learning situations.

Technology-Enriched Instruction is the final area suggested to enhance learning. In the Energy Project animations are used extensively but never before the students had the opportunity to construct their model as far as possible. During the use of animations the teacher is actively involved in challenging students to make predictions, give explanations, ask questions, compare the model to student's own model, and criticize the artist's model depicted by the animation. Students, therefore, are not passive observers but active participants in discussions fostered by the technology. In the Energy Curriculum use of animations are intended to help students 1) redirect and focus attention in specific areas, 2) visualize what is not readily seen; 3) add action into an otherwise static view of a model and thus extend the model; 4)stimulate recall of prior conceptions and transfer of concepts to mental models being constructed; 5) integrate various parts of models constructed and, 6) develop a series of causal relationships and mechanisms.