Planning, Implementing, and Managing Instruction
What the questions test
This domain is about designing and delivering instruction that makes grade-level content accessible. Know the SIOP model components (lesson preparation, building background, comprehensible input, strategies, interaction, practice/application, lesson delivery, review/assessment) and understand that SIOP is a lesson-planning framework, not a curriculum. Be able to write paired content and language objectives, apply WIDA proficiency levels and Can-Do descriptors, design sheltered/content-based instruction, and select scaffolds: visuals, graphic organizers, sentence frames, word walls, modeled thinking, native-language support, and cooperative grouping. Know grouping configurations, classroom management routines, differentiation, and the rationale for judicious L1 use.
Traps that catch candidates
- Writing a language objective that is really a content objective ("Students will learn about ecosystems").
- Confusing scaffolding with simplification: scaffolding maintains cognitive demand while supporting access; watering down the content lowers the standard.
- Assuming L1 use is a failure of immersion rather than a resource for comprehension and transfer.
- Overlooking that language objectives must name a function (compare, explain, argue) and a form (specific vocabulary or structure).
- Treating SIOP as something only for beginners - all proficiency levels need scaffolded academic language.
Worked example
Content standard: explain how water moves through the water cycle.
- Content objective: Students will describe the four stages of the water cycle and the energy source driving them.
- Language objective: Students will explain the sequence of the water cycle orally and in writing using sequence words (first, next, then, finally) and the terms evaporation, condensation, precipitation, collection. The language objective names function (explain/sequence), form (transition words plus target vocabulary), and mode (oral and written), so it can be observed and assessed.
Rule of thumb
If you cannot observe and measure it in the lesson, it is not a well-written objective. Pair every content objective with a language objective drawn from the language the task actually demands.