ELD lessons: The Language Objective

So we have seen how language objectives theoretically come from the ELD standards and how school districts have made them easier to teach by creating a scope and sequence of increasingly challenging grammatical forms that correspond to an ELL's level of English proficiency.

First Things First: The Language Objective

So what does a language objective actually look like. Here's a generic template:

"Students will be able to use ______________ in order to ________________________"
grammatical form language function

So from our previous example, "students will be able to use the -er (comparative form) in order to compare two different zoo animals" would be a language objective that uses the topic of animals.

ELD vs. (Other) Content Areas

This is a good opportunity to mention something important here. ELD is different from every other content area in one major way: In ELD, content (the topic) is a medium, or vehicle, to teach the grammatical forms and functions of the English Language, but is not the purpose of the ELD lesson. So, for example, in this case, science would be the time for students to learn about the topic of animals explicitly, while in ELD they are learning about the grammatical forms and functions of language that will help them (in this case) explain how animals are similar to one another. It is easy to see however, how ELD supports other content areas, as ELLs will now have the appropriate language tools to apply in content area learning.

Now, it doesn't quite work the other way. For instance, many bilingual teachers feel that if they "teach in English" say, for their science lesson, they are fulfilling ELD. However, content is the driver here, and leaves no room for the teaching of grammatical forms and language function. It's one or the other. Which is why a systematic approach to ELD is critical for English Learners to be able to gain the confidence to engage in content/grade level curriculum during the rest of the day.

We'll continue examining ELD lessons tomorrow!

- W