Language Objectives

Planning Teachers should write both content and

language objectives

Content objectives are drawn from the subject area standards

Content objectives can demonstratedeclarative knowledge - what students

should knowprocedural knowledge - what students

should be able to do to demonstrate their understanding of the content

Planning

Language objectives should provide ELLs with the language needed to understand and express content knowledge

Language objectives can be written for the text level, paragraph level, sentence level, or word level

ELLS

Content objectives should be the same for ELLs and native English speakers

Language objectives should vary depending on the ELL’s level of English proficiency

Consider the following example

Content objective – Students will demonstrate an understanding of the stages of the water cycle

Beginners – Students will draw and label pictures of each stage

Intermediate – Using pictures as visual supports, students will write sentences to describe each stage

Advanced – Students will write a science report describing the stages of the water cycle

Text level language objectives – Knowledge of genres

Personal genres

Literary genres

Factual genres

Analytic genres

Text-Level language objectives

Students will understand the social purpose of different genres

Students will understand how different genres should be organized

Students will understand the language features appropriate to each genre

Purpose of the genre

Narrative – to entertain and, often, to teach a lesson or moral

Argument – to persuade the reader to agree with a claim or point of view made by the writer

Possible Language Objective

Students will write a paragraph contrasting the purpose of a narrative and the purpose of an argument.

Organizational structure

Narrative – orientation, events, complication, resolution

Argument – statement of position and preview of following arguments, arguments with supporting evidence, (counterarguments) reaffirmation of writer’s position

Possible language objective

Students will write a narrative that includes the typical elements expected in a narrative.

Students will be able to label the different sections of a narrative (orientation, events, complication, resolution).

Language features of narratives

sequenced in time so uses time connectives

written in past tense

contains many action verbs

also contains dialogue and saying verbs (some may show how things are said)

also contains thinking verbs to show what participants are thinking/feeling

uses descriptive language to describe people and things

Possible language objective

Students will add dialogue to a narrative they have written using a variety of saying verbs.

Students will add dialogue to a narrative they have written correctly punctuating quotations.

Students will write a narrative using past tense action verbs to show action and present tense verbs in dialogue.

Language features of arguments

Uses connectives to show logical sequence (first, then, finally and therefore)

uses simple present tense to express generalizations

uses content-specific vocabularyuses evaluative vocabulary to

indicate writer’s point of view

Possible teaching activities

Have students work in groups

Give each group an excerpt from a different genre

Ask students to decide which genre they have

Ask them to support their decision with textual evidence

Possible teaching activities

Use graphic organizers to help students organize their writing to follow typical structures of genres

Deconstruct short texts to help students see typical genre structures

Assess student writing based on the presence or absence of typical genre structures

Possible teaching activities

Choose particular language features to teachverb tensestypes of connectives (signal words)descriptive adjectivescontent-specific vocabulary

Paragraph level language objectives

Students can use different language forms to provide greater cohesion in paragraphs. These include:pronouns that clearly refer to previous

sections of the textconjunctions that show connections

between and within sentencesnominalizations of verbs presented earlier

in the textdifferent patterns of cohesion to connect

sentences

Possible language objectives

Students will write a paragraph using chaining to provide cohesion between sentences.

Students will provide the correct pronoun forms to complete a Cloze activity.

Possible teaching activities

Lessons on pronouns

Lessons on conjunctions that signal relationships within the text

Lessons on nominalization

Lessons on patterns of cohesion between sentences

Sentence level language objectives

Students can learn to write complete sentences with appropriate punctuation

Students can learn to write complex sentences by connecting clauses with conjunctions

Students can learn to write lexically dense sentence by using expanded nominal groups

Possible language objectives

Students will expand nominal groups by adding adjectives and relative clauses.

Students will add appropriate end punctuation to a passage that lacks end punctuation (periods, question marks, exclamation points)

Possible teaching activities

Work on simple sentences

Work on adding conjunctions to create complex sentences

Work on using nominalization to create lexically dense sentences

Deconstruct – reconstruct activities

Word level language objectives

Teaching content-specific vocabulary related to different fields being studied

Possible teaching activities

Various activities to teach individual words, word parts, and word learning strategies, such as using context clues

Genre-based Teachingbased on Gibbons 2009

Building the field

Modeling the genre

Joint construction

Independent writing