Language education specialist Virginia Rojas believes that the best way to meet the needs of all students is through coteaching: the content teacher and English as a Second Language (ESL) teacher need to "work together to provide a seamless language-development and educational program." Here is a list of criteria Rojas has created to help teachers assess whether they are providing that seamless program.
Instructional Planning Checklist
The ESL Combined Lesson: A Checklist - table
Criteria | Present | Absent |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Use a standards-based model of curriculum articulation for effectively planning instruction for English language learners. | ||
| 2. Articulate a concrete vision of what the students should know and be able to do (i. e. standards and benchmarks) in the instructional plans. | ||
| 3. Organize instructional plans around guiding questions beyond the “word” or “recall” discourse level (i.e. pragmatically engaging questions for the unit). | ||
| 4. Identify appropriate culminating oral and writing tasks which provide evidence that students are able to meet the standards in the instructional plans. | ||
| 5. Identify ongoing performance tasks which provide evidence that students are able to meet the benchmarks in the instructional plans and which logically lead to the culminating tasks. | ||
| 6. Use the assessment tasks in order to plan backwards for instruction (i.e. assessment-driven instructional planning). | ||
| 7. Articulate specific behaviors students can do to show they are progressing towards the benchmarks in the instructional plans (i.e. what are students doing/saying during a particular activity). | ||
| 8. Specify the instructional strategies to be used to bring students closer to the attainment of the benchmarks and standards in the instructional plans. | ||
| 9. Identify specific instructional strategies to facilitate oral participation and interaction in the instructional plans (i.e. cooperative learning strategies). | ||
| 10. Identify a variety of effective reading strategies for developing English language skills in the instructional plans (i.e. read alouds, shared reading, guided reading & independent reading in the lower grades and pre-reading, during reading, and post-reading in the upper grades). | ||
| 11. Identify a variety of effective writing strategies for developing English language skills in the instructional plans (i.e shared writing, interactive writing, guided writing, and independent writing in the lower grades and pre-writing, drafting, sharing, revising & editing in the upper grades). | ||
| 12. Identify a variety of effective vocabulary or word strategies for developing English language skills in the instructional plans. | ||
| 13. Specify the types of evaluative feedback learners will be given about the quality of their language performance (i.e. checklists, rubrics, conferences, anecdotal records) in the instructional plans. | ||
| 14. Apply differentiation principles for all learners (i.e. task/material). | ||
| 15. Reflect on success of unit for next cycle. |
Source: From “Instructional Planning Checklist,” by V.P. Rojas, 2002, English Language Learners in the Mainstream: Strategies That Work, handouts for the ASCD 2002 Teaching and Learning Conference, p. 12. Copyright 2002 by Virginia Rojas. Reprinted with permission.