Instructional Planning and Assessment
What Domain III Covers
This domain tests planning for ELs - standards, content and language objectives, sheltered instruction - and assessment: screening, progress monitoring, summative proficiency testing, and the technical qualities of sound measures.
Core Concepts
- WIDA ELD standards describe language use across content areas at six proficiency levels: Entering, Emerging, Developing, Expanding, Bridging, Reaching. ACCESS for ELLs is the annual summative ELP assessment; WIDA Screener is the initial identification tool.
- SIOP organizes sheltered instruction into eight components and thirty features, including content and language objectives, comprehensible input, interaction, and review/assessment.
- Language objectives pair a function (explain, compare, justify), a form (past tense, comparative adjectives, because-clauses), and the content stem. They are not restatements of content objectives.
- Assessment qualities: validity (measures the intended construct), reliability (consistency), fairness (free of cultural and linguistic bias), and practicality. Accommodations must not change the construct - a read-aloud on a reading comprehension test invalidates the score.
- Backward design (Wiggins & McTighe): identify desired results, determine acceptable evidence, then plan instruction. Use formative checks, rubrics with descriptive criteria, portfolios, and running records.
Worked Example
Seventh-grade science, water cycle. A weak objective is "Students will learn the water cycle." A strong one is: "Students will explain the stages of the water cycle orally, using sequence words (first, then, finally) and present-tense verbs." Assessment: a labeled diagram plus a short oral explanation scored on a rubric with separate content and language criteria. Reasoning: the objective names a function, a form, and content, so instruction and scoring align.
Traps
Writing language objectives that are only content; selecting accommodations that alter the construct; assuming one ACCESS level automatically determines exit, when exit criteria are state-specific; relying on a single measure; forgetting that screening begins with the home language survey and that parents must be notified of program placement.