A Guide to Writing Lesson Plans for World Language Classes
Core Curriculum Content Standards
¨ Think of the standards your lesson will address, and be sure to indicate them on your lesson plan. Be sure that your planned activities reflect the standards that you choose. For example, if you choose 7.1 Interpretive as your standard, your students should be doing some activity that requires them to interpret the target language, such as looking at an authentic class schedule from a target language country, and answering questions that require them to interpret the information provided. If you choose 7.1Interpersonal as your standard, your students will be conversing or collaborating with each other in the target language.. Or, they could be writing an email to someone from the target country, asking questions about what lunch is like during the school day there.
¨ CULTURE should be an integral or underlying focus of every lesson. As you plan, think about how your students will learn about cultural products, practices, or perspectives through this lesson.
¨ Within a unit, all standard strands and modes of communication (interpretive, interpersonal and presentational) that apply in the 2012 WL Standard for your class’ particular proficiency level should be addressed. Students should have daily opportunities to participate in interpersonal communication and to interpret the written or oral language.
¨ Within your weekly lessons, your students should have opportunities to listen to and/or read authentic language resources, and compare and contrast cultural aspects of the target language country to those of their own.
Objectives
· Objectives should be primarily skills-based and should reflect what your students will be able to do by the end of the period. Objectives should focus on communicative proficiency – what students can DO with the language, or how students use and apply the language to communicate. Each day you want your students to advance towards your ultimate objective of the unit by participating in your thoughtfully and purposefully designed activities.
Sample Objectives
o One objective may focus on the development of foundation skills related to vocabulary, content, grammatical functions that will help students achieve the more rigorous objective:
§ Students will be able to categorize new vocabulary;
§ Students will be able to associate previously learned vocabulary to new words by creating word webs;
§ Students will be able to correctly identify new vocabulary depicted by pictures on individual flashcards;
§ Students will be able to express what each member of their family does during vacation by substituting Subjects and verbs in guided, open-ended sentences.
o At least one objective should focus on a specific language skill
§ Interpretive Listening
· Students will be able to listen to a podcast on Soccer and correctly answer comprehension questions based on what they heard.
· Students will be able to listen to an Italian song and identify the words missing from the lyrics
§ Interpretive Reading
· Students will be able to compare three ads for apartments in Rome and determine which best fulfills a list of specific criteria
· Students will be able to compare room features in two hotels in Venice and explain why one is more expensive than the other
· Students will be able to compare and contrast a menu from a typical restaurant in Italy and an Italian restaurant in the Union County
§ Interpersonal Speaking
· Students will be able to ask and answer questions about likes and dislikes regarding leisure activities;
· Students will be able to engage in a brief spontaneous conversation about food preferences;
· Students will be able to interview a partner about the layout of his/her house.
· Students will be able to participate in a simulated phone conversation about ordering clothing items from a store in Rome
· Using an authentic map of Rome, students will be able to explain how to get from one tourist attraction to another (and a partner will be able to accurately interpret the directions by drawing the route on the map)
§ Interpersonal Writing
· Students will be able to write an email requesting information about the cost and general accommodations regarding a specific apartment in Rome;
· Students will be able to participate in a discussion on a Blog about sports, by expressing their own opinion and also reacting to what others have written
§ Presentational Speaking
· Students will be able to speak to the class about their school schedule, using visuals as prompts.
· After reviewing the menus of three different restaurants in Venice, students will be able to present to the class their recommendations for the best restaurant to eat at, and provide specific reasons for their recommendations.
§ Presentational Writing
· Students will be able to write a letter to a store in Rome explaining their reasons for returning a particular clothing item;
· Students will be able to write a Diamond Poem describing particular sports;
· Students will be able to write a page comparing and contrasting the town they live in with a typical town in Italy.
· Students will be able to create a digital story about an Italian field trip they took (perhaps to Little Italy)
Activities: Plan with the end in mind – Create Student-Centered Environment
¨ Think of what your students will need to know in order to accomplish your stated objective, and plan your activities accordingly. For example, if you want your students to be able to talk about their family, think of all the vocabulary and grammatical structures or functions they will need to know to be able to have that conversation.
¨ START WITH THE FAMILIAR: Use your Do Now to review what students learned the day before or to focus them on what they will do in the day’s lesson. Daily warm-ups should be used to re-enter previously-learned and familiar vocabulary and functions that will help them with the day’s planned activities. By starting on familiar ground, you give your students a good foundation for the day’s lesson and give them confidence by beginning with material with which they are already familiar.
¨ Plan activities that involve ALL STUDENTS at once. Effective teachers maximize student participation by implementing strategies that engage all students simultaneously and enable all students to participate and experience success. This is accomplished through a student-centered environment, and cannot happen if the lesson is completely teacher-directed (teacher question - student response).
¨ RIGOR: Rigor should be evident in your daily lesson plans. Plan activities that take students beyond identification, matching, simple recognition, one-word answers, etc. Every day, activities should be implemented that require your students to think, apply their language skills in new situations, and create with the language.
Plan your activities with the intent to slowly build your students’ language and critical thinking skills. Start with simple activities (recall, yes/no, who, what, when where questions), review of vocabulary words, and gradually add activities that require your students to think somewhat on their own, make choices, and offer original responses in guided context (open-ended sentences, why and how questions, etc.). End with activities that require application of language to new situations (converse with a partner about…, tell a story about a picture on a transparency –either to a partner, or within a collaborative group where each student adds a sentence, etc.) Students should have ample opportunities to compare and contrast, analyze, and synthesize various aspects of the target language culture.
¨ Plan daily opportunities for interpersonal communication in which students converse with partners using the vocabulary and communicative functions that are the focus of your lesson, or collaborate with group members for a communicative purpose (interview, information gap, etc.) Students must have opportunities to speak spontaneously, in other words, without a specific script. Students can be taught to do this through a guided conversation with a variety of choices. You should also expect students to REACT to what their partner is saying, thus enhancing their interpretive listening skills. Reading from scripts merely assesses memorization and pronunciation skills. This may be appropriate in beginning levels (elementary, 5th-6th, level I HS, but in subsequent levels, students must be given ample opportunities to spontaneously apply and react in the target language, which will prepare them to interact in real-life situations.
¨ Within each unit, students should have opportunities to use technology to interpret authentic language samples (oral and written), to communicate with others (preferably target language audiences), and to create projects or products (ideally intended for target language audiences)
Modeling/Guided Practice
¨ Remember to plan how you will model or demonstrate exactly what you want the students to do before beginning each activity. For example, if they are answering a series of questions, do the first one together, or show the first one completed on a transparency. Or, if you want your students to converse with a partner, demonstrate with a student how the conversation should take place, or have two students model a conversation first. Provide a written communicative guide, with choices, that your students can refer to throughout the activity. Students work best when they can see what your expectations are.
¨ Guided practice is important to allow students the opportunity to try activities in class while they have your support and can ask questions, before being assigned similar activities for homework to do on their own.
Checking for Understanding
¨ Think of how you will check for understanding (formative assessment). That is, how will you know that your students have learned the skill or the knowledge you set out to teach them that period – what will you accept as proof or evidence that they have achieved your day’s objective?
¨ Use your formative assessments to inform your teaching. In other words, if you discover that your students don’t appear to have learned what you set out to teach, (they don’t know the vocabulary, they cannot engage in meaningful conversation, they cannot correctly answer questions, etc.) think of a different strategy to use the next day to help them learn the information or acquire the skill.
Assessments
¨ All assessments should be relevant and meaningful to the students, and should assess your students’ ability to USE and/or INTERPRET the target language. Assessments should not simply involve matching, identifying, (simple recall), but rather should involve activities that require application of the language in original and meaningful context.
Homework
¨ Assigned homework should be meaningful and purposeful, and should not simply be busy work. Homework should also engage the students.
¨ Homework should only be assigned after the students have had guided practice during class with similar tasks, so their chances of successfully completing the assignment are much greater. Use the “tic-tac-toe” strategy to differentiate your assignments for the diverse learners in your classes.
Role of Grammar
While grammatical accuracy plays an important role in language proficiency, grammar should ALWAYS be taught in contexts that support meaningful communication in regards to the thematic focus of the lesson and overall unit. We do not support teaching grammar for grammar’s sake. In other words, we do not want to see students merely conjugating verbs, but rather, we want students to be able to manipulate verb forms to ask/answer questions, or express opinions related to targeted themes.
In a unit on city life, for example, students will need to know verbs related to activities in a city or town, and verbs related to giving and following directions to get from one place to another. Students will also need to know how to ask questions to make common weekend or after school plans. In this context, it would be appropriate to introduce the present tense of verbs related to activities, (going shopping, buying, selling, seeing a movie, going to the library to read, find a book, borrow a book, do homework, etc.) simple commands related to giving directions, (go straight, turn right/left, walk three blocks, stop at the corner, etc.) and verbs needed to ask about preferences regarding plans (What do you want to do? What do you prefer?)
In this way, students will see the meaning of and purpose for what they are learning, and will be able to apply the concept immediately for a specific communicative purpose.