Planning and Implementing Instruction
Domain 3: Planning and Implementing Instruction
This domain tests whether you can design instruction that develops both content knowledge and English proficiency. Expect scenarios on standards, language objectives, scaffolds, grouping, and differentiation.
Core concepts
- WIDA ELD standards and Can Do descriptors describe what multilingual learners can do at each proficiency level; they are not a curriculum.
- Content and language objectives should be paired. A language objective names the language function and form, such as “explain cause and effect using because and as a result.”
- Sheltered instruction/SIOP: prepare content objectives, build background, provide comprehensible input, scaffold interaction, and review language.
- Backward design: start with assessment evidence, then plan learning experiences.
- Scaffolds: visuals, graphic organizers, sentence frames, modeled texts, word banks, and strategic L1 support. Scaffolds should be temporary.
- Interaction matters: structured pair and group tasks increase output and negotiation of meaning.
- UDL: multiple means of representation, engagement, and expression.
Worked example
A grade 3 science lesson on the water cycle is planned for students at WIDA level 2. Content objective: sequence evaporation, condensation, precipitation, and collection. Language objective: retell the cycle using sequence words (first, next, then, finally) and a labeled diagram. Scaffolds: a word bank, a cycle graphic organizer, and a partner retell with sentence frames. Assessment: students point and say the sequence using the diagram. The reasoning: the language objective is measurable and tied to the content task; the scaffold supports output without simplifying the science.
Traps that cost marks
- Writing “students will understand” as an objective-it is not observable.
- Watering down content instead of scaffolding language.
- Planning activities without a language function.
- Using scaffolds permanently so students never work independently.
- Ignoring L1 as a resource for building concepts.