Practical Steps for How to Integrate English Language Development Standards-Based Instruction

A woman with dark curly hair writing notes about the English language on a large poster with a market

By Molly Ross

Molly Ross is an instructional coach in Massachusetts and part time faculty at Boston University. She has taught English as a second language for twelve years in the elementary through high school settings.

When I first opened the new WIDA English Language Development (ELD) Standards Framework, 2020 Edition I was honestly overwhelmed with the linguistic terms and concepts, many of which I had not thought about since getting my Masters of Arts in Teaching English as a Second Language. Then I felt a wave of regret because upon reflecting on my own language teaching practice I didn’t think I did enough to support the language of my multilingual earners (MLLs). What was I doing all these years?

The good news is that once I spent more time planning units and lessons with the WIDA ELD Standards I can confidently say that I did not completely miss the mark with language teaching but I can also say that I could have done more to explicitly and specifically focus on the function and features of the language required for students to use in school.

When you know better you do better! Below is a practical guide on integrating content based standards and language development instruction along with an example of a high school language unit based on science.

Where do we start?

We start with the end in mind while also considering who our multilingual learners are. Using the understanding by design framework by Wiggins and McTighe (2005) it's crucial to start with the end in mind. But what does this look like for an ELD unit? Do we start with the language we think is important? Do we start with the content students are learning across their classes? Or do we start with actual tasks students are asked to do like reading a particular novel or researching a historical topic or performing a scientific experiment?

In our framework for teaching language development we believe it is crucial to start with both grade level content our MLLs are being exposed to and the purpose for using language within that particular content. According to WIDA (2020) “multilingual learners develop content and language concurrently, with academic content as a context for language learning and language learning and language as a means for learning academic content (p. 19).

A chart showing English Language Development Standards-Based Instruction. Around a loop labeled "ESL Lesson" are three headings: "Language Skills or Practice," "Content," and "Language Function."

Guiding Question #1: What do our multilingual learners need linguistically and academically?

We want to always start with the students that we have in front of us at this moment. Who are the multilingual learners? What is important to their learning journey?

Our high school ELD team determined that there was a need for students to focus on explaining their thinking process. Teachers observed that students were defaulting to very general vocabulary and simple sentences when asked about their own thinking. Additionally, we have been collecting and analyzing oral language samples that were telling us that students needed to work on being specific and elaborating in their oral language.

Guiding Question #2: What is the main use of the language we are teaching?

Once we understand the students' language needs we determine the use of language to be the focus of the ELD unit. To do this we start with the 5 WIDA Standards to determine the content area focus. Then we often use the most prominent WIDA Key Language Uses within the WIDA ELD Standards: Narrate, Inform, Explain and Argue. While we acknowledge that the WIDA Key Language Uses overlap and are not strict language categories, they have been a grounding place to start in our unit development. It can also be helpful to drill down the use of language into more specific functions like cause/effect, describing, and compare/contrast.

For our high school ELD unit, our team chose to focus on explaining in science. Even more specifically, we wanted our students to explain their own personal process and reflections within an engineering design project to build bridges (WIDA Standard 4: The language for science).

Guiding Question #3: What specific language skills or practices do students need?

Once we understand the overarching purpose of using language in our unit we need to determine the specific language goals. For this, we use the WIDA Language Expectations including the Language Functions and Features and the WIDA proficiency level descriptors. In our framework we also classify these language skills into discourse goals, sentence goals and word goals. By using these categories we ensure that we are not too hyper focused on one area, for example vocabulary, and that we are considering the range of language needed for our identified use and content.

At this stage it is important to consider the students’ needs because we can not focus on every aspect of language at one time. So we must prioritize which language expectations, functions and features we want to emphasize within the unit. Once these are identified, they become the basis for language lessons throughout the unit.

In our engineering ELD unit example, we really considered our student population and what we were noticing in the ELD classes as well as what we noticed in co-taught content classes. All year we have been working with this group on expanding their language use and being more specific so we wanted to continue that work for this unit. Additionally, we considered how the language needed for science is very technical, specific and precise. Below are the goals identified for this particular unit.

A chart showing the purposes and evaluation rubric of Discourse Level Goals, Sentence Level Goals, and Word Level Goals.

Guiding Question #4: What content standards will we be using to guide the language learning?

As mentioned above, it's important to ground all language learning in grade level content. This means that as language educators we need to go to the grade level content standards to build our language units around. While we are not content experts, language educators need to ground the use of language that we are instructing to the use of language that students are expected to use in their content classes.

When deciding to do a unit based on the language for science and explaining students’ process and thinking we went to the MA DESE Science and Technology/Engineering Curriculum Framework. We chose the following content standard:

HS-ETS1-2. Break a complex real-world problem into smaller, more manageable problems that each can be solved using scientific and engineering principles.

By checking the standard we realized that we had to make the process of building bridges into a real-world problem so we decided to introduce examples of bridges that have collapsed.

You can also start with the content standard especially if you are co-teaching or support a content area classroom in any way.

Guiding Question #5: How will we assess the language goals?

Once we have a clear understanding of the purpose for using language within this specific content and the clear set of language goals, we need to consider how we assess these goals. The assessment should be grounded in both the content standard as well as the use of language and the specific language skills and practices chosen as the unit’s goals. By starting with the end assessment in mind, we can back plan our lessons to ensure students are practicing the language for the content as well as the specific language skills within the larger goal of using the language.

In our example unit, we decided that the final product would be a journal and student presentations. Both would include language where students are describing their process for building the bridges where students develop reasoning for making the design choices while using the technical language and past tense verbs. Below are examples of students’ journal writing:

Step 3 from a journal assignment. Above a photo of the project, it reads, ‘In step 3 I was trying to find a way to make something that would hold the trusses so I glued four sticks together and did that six times so there were six truss supports.’ — *Journal from a student at WIDA proficiency level 2.5*

Step 1 from a journal assignment. Above a photo of the project, it reads ‘Step 1: First we stacked and glued 8 popsicle sticks to make one beam. We made four beams. Then, we made the deck.’ — *Journal from a student at WIDA proficiency level 1.5*

Reflections

Using these guiding questions to help plan ELD units has allowed our team of teachers to simultaneously focus more on very specific language goals while ensuring that we are basing our instruction in grade level content. By focusing on the use of language we can ensure that our language units are grounded in the language that is being asked of our students in their academic classes.

It's imperative that as language teachers we find the balance between teaching content and language so that our students learn language within real contexts of language use.

References

WIDA. (2020). WIDA English language development standards framework, 2020 edition: Kindergarten–grade 12. Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System.
Wiggins, G. P., & McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding by design (2nd ed.). Pearson.
Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. (2016). Science and Technology/Engineering Curriculum Framework Grades Pre-Kindergarten to 12.