In this article, the authors explore ways in which they have worked together in understanding the complexities of academic language within the science classroom and discuss strategies they have used to teach academic language to young adolescent English Language Learners (ELLs) within inquiry-based science lessons. They discuss strategies they use to explicitly teach linguistic components of academic language and provide examples of ways they support ELLs in understanding how mathematical expression and visual representation support meaning making with the hybrid language of academic science. (Contains 8 figures.)