Planning, Instruction, and Assessment for Language Learning
This domain tests backward design, standards alignment, integrated performance assessment, formative feedback, and proficiency-based grading.
Core rules and concepts
- Backward design starts with an essential question and enduring understandings, then assessment evidence, then learning activities.
- An Integrated Performance Assessment (IPA) links interpretive, interpersonal, and presentational tasks around one theme, with rubrics and feedback before the next performance.
- Formative assessment creates feedback loops; NCSSFL-ACTFL Can-Do Statements support self-assessment. Summative assessment is separate.
- Proficiency-based grading reports what learners can do with language, not compliance or effort alone.
Worked example
A food unit asks, How does food reflect identity? Interpretive: students read restaurant reviews. Interpersonal: pairs discuss which restaurant to recommend. Presentational: each student writes a review. Each mode has its own rubric, and students self-assess with Can-Do statements before the summative task. Reasoning: alignment ensures assessment matches instruction and mode; the IPA integrates skills rather than isolating them.
Traps that cost marks
- Activity-driven planning with no enduring understanding.
- Assessing content or skills that were not taught.
- Using one rubric for all three modes.
- Vague participation grades that reward compliance.
- Treating formative checks as summative judgments.