A Guide to Writing Lesson Plans for World Language Classes
Core Curriculum Content Standards
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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.
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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.
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Within a unit, all standard strands and modes of communication (interpretive,
interpersonal and presentational) that apply in the 2009 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.
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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
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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. Each day you want your
students to advance towards your ultimate objective of the unit.
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
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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
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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.
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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 warmups 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.
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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 can not happen if the lesson is completely
teacher-directed (teacher question - student response).
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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
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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?
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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
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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
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Assigned homework should be meaningful and purposeful, and should not simply be
busy work. Homework should also engage the students.
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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.