A language objective beside every content objective

Multilingual Learner Lesson Plan Template

For ESL, ELL and sheltered-instruction classrooms: the content objective and the language objective side by side, the proficiency levels in the room named in the header, a sensory-graphic-interactive supports row, a four-step sequence with language practice built into each step, and content and language assessed separately.

Content and language, together

Multilingual learner lesson plan template

Portrait multilingual learner lesson plan with paired content and language objective boxes, a three-column supports row, and a sequence table with a language practice column

Word Google Docs

Multilingual Learner Lesson Plan — Word & Google Docs

Content objective beside language objective, a sensory-graphic-interactive supports row, a four-step sequence with language practice built in, and separate content and language assessment.

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PDF

Multilingual Learner Lesson Plan — fillable PDF

One page, portrait. Type into the fields or print it blank and handwrite.

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Specifications: US Letter, 8.5 × 11 inches. Word files are editable .docx that open in Word 2007 through Microsoft 365, including Word for Mac; the Google Docs link makes a copy in your own Drive; the PDF has real form fields and prints as plain hairline boxes when blank. Free to use in as many classes as you like, no account, no watermark.

Why it is laid out this way

About the multilingual learners template

The habit this sheet builds is the paired objective: every lesson states what students will learn and what they will do with language to learn it — listen, speak, read or write, and in what form. The supports row makes the scaffolds explicit before the lesson, and the sequence rows are labelled the way sheltered-instruction training labels them: building background, comprehensible input, practice and application, review. Assessment is split so a student who understood the content but could not yet show it in English is seen.

It is written for classrooms using the SIOP® Model among others; SIOP® is a registered trademark of Savvas Learning Company, and this template is an independent layout, not their published form. Where your standards are WIDA's, the language objective box is where the standard and the Can Do descriptor go.

Questions teachers ask

Multilingual Learners lesson plans, answered

What is a language objective?

A statement of the language students will use to reach the content objective: 'Students will explain the water cycle orally using sequence words' is a language objective; 'Students will understand the water cycle' is a content one. Writing both is the single change that makes a lesson work for newcomers without changing it for everyone else.

What are sensory, graphic and interactive supports?

The three families of scaffold: real objects, pictures and video; organizers, charts and word walls; partners, small groups and the teacher. Naming one of each in advance is how a plan stops relying on English alone to carry the content.

Why assess content and language separately?

Because they fail separately. A student can grasp the science and not yet have the English to write it; grading the writing as the science hides what was learned. Two boxes, two judgments.