Teaching science in an English-medium school where your students have a different mother tongue brings various issues to light. Our ultimate goal in teaching science is to help students understand the big ideas; however, poor language skills may make this hard and can lead to a heavy emphasis on "passing the exam at all costs" using rote learning. This article covers ways in which students with English as an additional language can access and make sense of scientific information and ideas, in both spoken and written formats. We aim to provide students with a safe environment to practise formulating ideas no matter where their difficulties lie, be it a lack of vocabulary, a lack of background understanding or culturally different styles of learning.