This study examines the instructional decision making of an eighth-grade general education science teacher working with Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CLD) students in a heterogeneously grouped class without the support of a specialized English to Speakers of other Languages (ESOL) teacher. To do so, this study employs Erving Goffman’s theoretical and conceptual work with participant structures and interactional frameworks to examine the multiple modes of communication used by the participating teacher to provide the CLD students with multiple access points for meaning making and representation of the scientific concepts. This way of examining instruction for CLD students in mainstream general education settings has the potential to provide general education teachers with resources and strategies to provide engaging and accessible content instruction for CLD students.