Planning, Implementing, and Managing Instruction
Planning, Implementing, and Managing Instruction
This is the largest domain. It tests how you plan standards-based lessons with both content and language objectives, shelter instruction, scaffold language demands, group students, manage classrooms, and comply with Florida's ESOL requirements.
Core concepts
- Sheltered instruction makes grade-level content comprehensible while promoting English language development. The SIOP model has eight components: lesson preparation, building background, comprehensible input, strategies, interaction, practice/application, lesson delivery, and review/assessment.
- CALLA (Cognitive Academic Language Learning Approach) integrates content, language, and learning strategies-metacognitive, cognitive, and social/affective.
- Every lesson should have a content objective and a language objective naming a function (compare, explain, justify) and the language forms (vocabulary, sentence frames, discourse structures) students will use.
- Scaffolding includes modeling, visuals, graphic organizers, sentence frames, wait time, and gradual release. Comprehensible input (Krashen) is not simplification of content; it is accessible presentation.
- Program models: ESL pull-out/push-in, sheltered English, transitional bilingual, maintenance/developmental bilingual, and dual-language immersion. Know the goal of each.
- Florida's META Consent Decree requires identification, assessment, placement, equal access to programs, trained teachers, and monitoring of ELLs; it is not a curriculum.
Worked example
A science lesson asks students to “explain how photosynthesis transfers energy.” A weak language objective is “students will learn photosynthesis vocabulary.” A stronger one is: “Students will explain the energy transfer in photosynthesis using the sentence frame ‘Light energy is converted into ___ energy, which is stored in ___,’ and the terms chloroplast, glucose, and radiant.” Reasoning: the language objective names the function (explain), the forms (frame, terms), and the content connection; it is measurable and supports the content objective rather than replacing it.
Traps that cost marks
- Writing only content objectives, or writing language objectives that are just “understand vocabulary.”
- Treating scaffolding as lowering expectations; scaffolds should be temporary and removed.
- Confusing bilingual program models-especially transitional (quick exit to English) with maintenance/dual-language (long-term bilingualism).
- Overusing one grouping pattern; effective instruction varies whole-group, small-group, and cooperative structures.