Writing Content and Language Objectives

Writing Content and Language Objectives August 2010 •Objectives

are related to…

•Differences between content and language…

•Writing content objectives…

•Writing language objectives…

•Basic components of lessons…

•Your best friend…

Objectives are related to… 

Content objectives are related to your content-area TEKS.

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Language objectives are related to the ELPs from Chapter 74.4.

Differences between understanding content and developing language are…

Content  Journals  Graphic organizers  Summarization frames  Hands-on activities such as labs  Realia/models  Multimedia presentations  Manipulatives

Language  Vocab. strategies  Sentence stems  Modeling the use of academic language  Writing/talking in complete sentences  Involving listening, speaking, reading, and writing

Writing content objectives…

Find objective in the TEKS.  Write a content objective that includes: 

◦ Who – students ◦ What – content TEKS ◦ How/with what – tasks, processes, activities, etc. 

Use student-friendly wording that all of your students can understand.

Examples of content objectives…

The learner will differentiate between living & nonliving things using pictures.  The student will design an experiment to test the effect of force on an object.  We will use base ten blocks to order whole numbers.  I will use appropriate tools to collect information during an experiment.  The students will add fractions with common denominators using a fraction bar. 

Writing language objectives…

Find objective in the ELPs.  Write a language objective that includes: 

◦ Who – students ◦ What – ELPs student expectations ◦ How/with what – words, phrases, printed materials, etc. 

Use student-friendly wording that all of your students can understand.

Examples of language objectives…

The student will pronounce the words landforms, mountains, hills, valley, and plains correctly in small groups.  I can share in a cooperative group what I know about designing experiments.  We will describe in writing an object’s motion in terms of position, speed, displacement, and acceleration using sentence starters.  The learner will use vocab. note cards to distinguish between biomolecules with regards to structure and function.  The student will use graphic organizer supports to read problems about elapsed time. 

Examples of content and language objectives side-by-side… 

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Content Objective We can differentiate between living & nonliving things.

I will record & graph weather information to see if there are patterns.

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Language Objective We will use a card sort to categorize pictures as living or nonliving in pairs, explaining our choices to our partners.

I will listen to weather reports to obtain the daily weather information.

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Content Objective We will design an experiment to test the effect of force on an object.

The student will analyze different views on the existence of global warming.

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Language Objective We will share in a cooperative group what we know about designing experiments.

The student will utilize shared reading to analyze different views on global warming.

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Content Objective I will construct a picture graph.

The students will use ordered pairs to locate and find points on a coordinate plane.

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Language Objective I will pronounce the words construct, picture graph, and symbol correctly when explaining my graph.

The students will show listening comprehension by playing a game of Coordinate Geometry Bingo.

Basic components of lessons…

Content objectives  Language objectives  Vocab. to be taught or reviewed  Classroom strategies & techniques to differentiate according to language levels  Teacher questions  Use of sentence stems for students’ responses 

Example of lesson components…     

We will use an electrical circuit to test if a material is a conductor or an insulator.

We will demonstrate our understanding of conductors vs. insulators both verbally & in writing.

Vocab. – electricity, conductor, insulator Use graphic organizer; discuss PowerPoint; engage in simple experiment; use realia to make predictions Teacher questions & sentence stems for students’ responses – ◦ What does insulator mean to you? ◦ The word insulator means ___________. ◦ How can you use a simple circuit to test if a material conducts electricity? ◦ I can use a simple circuit to test materials by ________. ◦ What do you predict will happen? ◦ I predict a ________ will (or will not) conduct electricity because ____________.

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Questions?