Foundations of ESOL Instruction
Domain II covers program models, scaffolding, standards-based planning, and integrating language with content. Items ask you to choose instruction that makes grade-level content accessible without diluting it.
Core rules and concepts
- Program models: pull-out ESL, push-in/co-teaching, sheltered English immersion (SEI), newcomer programs, dual-language/bilingual, ELD.
- Scaffolding: Vygotsky's zone of proximal development; Cummins' quadrants (context-embedded vs. context-reduced; cognitively demanding vs. undemanding)-new academic content should begin context-embedded.
- SIOP components (Echevarria, Vogt, Short): lesson preparation, building background, comprehensible input, strategies, interaction, practice/application, lesson delivery, review and assessment.
- Language objectives name a language function plus vocabulary and form, distinct from content objectives.
- Strategies instruction: CALLA (Chamot and O'Malley)-metacognitive, cognitive, and social/affective strategies.
- Methods: Total Physical Response, the natural approach, communicative language teaching, cooperative learning, and strategic translanguaging.
Worked example
A science teacher plans a water-cycle lesson for intermediate ELs. Content objective: "Students will describe the stages of the water cycle." Language objective: "Students will sequence the stages using first, next, then, finally and define evaporation, condensation, and precipitation." The language objective names a function (sequencing), key vocabulary, and a sentence structure, so the teacher can assess language separately from science understanding.
Traps
- Writing a language objective that merely rewords the content objective.
- Starting beginners with context-reduced, cognitively demanding text (upper-right quadrant).
- Treating L1 use as failure rather than as a scaffold to be faded.
- Confusing sheltered instruction with a simplified curriculum.