The course's grading model protects EAL students structurally. The AISC strand rubric scores Knowledge & Understanding (K/U), Thinking & Transfer (T/T), and Communication (C) separately, and reports each on its own. Communication is not a score for grammatical accuracy or for how native your English sounds either: it asks whether your scientific reasoning reaches a reader. Strong science thinking in a second language receives the score it earns.
For students
AI as an EAL tool
AI is the most powerful tool an EAL student has: when used openly. Translation (L1 ↔ English), vocabulary explanation in your first language, sentence rewording for clarity, comprehension checks on dense readings, and oral-defense rehearsal in L1 are all legitimate uses as long as you document them under the AI Documentation Protocol.
What's NOT legitimate is asking AI to write the deliverable, submitting AI translation you haven't read, or hiding AI use. These are the same lines as for any student. The Teacher Strategy Guide §5 spells out the disclosure pattern for EAL-heavy AI use: a worked example is in there.