Publishers, Ask These Key Questions to Design Materials with Scope and Sequence for Language Development

As experts at Stanford's Understanding Language point out, "Content area teachers must understand and use the language and literacy practices found in these subjects to help students learn better and perform better."

Effective instructional materials should introduce, repeat, and connect content area language throughout units of instruction. This helps students learn the language they need to understand concepts and analyze information. Unfortunately, language development support often isn't consistent across lessons. This means students miss opportunities to improve their academic language skills over time. A thoughtfully designed scope and sequence of language that progresses language function, what students do with the language such as arguing or persuading, and forms, specific words, sentence structures, and discourse, greatly benefit all students, but especially Multilingual Learners (MLLs).

The Role of Language Development in Instructional Materials

High-quality instructional materials include a scope and sequence that provides teachers with a clear overview of the standards-based topics, concepts, and skills that should be taught progressively across a unit. A linguistically responsive set of materials also includes a coherent scope and sequence of language demands corresponding to the standards. This is the language that students will need to progressively develop to understand important concepts, engage in complex analysis, and produce a range of language and literacy practices that will enhance MLLs' potential to meet the goals of a unit.

A robust language scope and sequence should:

• Clarify Disciplinary Purpose: Make it clear to teachers and students why a specific language focus is important in activities and lessons.
• Build on Students' Resources: Show how each unit leverages the linguistic and cultural assets that students bring to the classroom.
• Provide Scaffolding: Highlight opportunities for students to read, write, listen, speak, and interact in discipline-specific ways.
• Integrate Feedback: Identify where students can receive feedback and revise their use of essential language throughout the unit.
• Support Informed Decision-Making: Offer a clear instructional framework that allows teachers to make informed instructional choices about language pedagogy.

Getting Started: Key Questions for Your Scope and Sequence

While an entire book could be devoted to crafting a linguistically responsive scope and sequence, here are some foundational questions to guide your efforts:

1. Unit Language Analysis:
   
   
   • What essential language will students need to provide evidence of their learning on the culminating assessment?
   • What vocabulary, sentence structures, or discourse practices will be developed throughout the unit for students to successfully learn and contribute ideas about the essential content?
   • Why and how should certain languages be prioritized for explicit teaching?
   • How will you build essential language skills progressively in a spiraling manner and through multiple communicative modes throughout the unit?
     
     
2. Connecting Language and Content Objectives:
   
   
   • What language objectives across lessons will help provide a roadmap for teachers and students to understand the essential language to build in order to meet the content goals and grade-level standards?
   • Are these objectives closely tied to the required content knowledge and analytical skills for the unit?
   • Are the language objectives fully incorporated into what will be taught, scaffolded and practiced through various reading, writing, listening, speaking and discussion activities?
     
     
3. Planning for language scaffolds:
   
   
   • What language supports will you integrate into each lesson to help students learn both content and language simultaneously?
   • What explicit scaffolds do multilingual learners require to engage meaningfully in grade-level learning, build their knowledge and skills over time and demonstrate their learning?
   • How will materials provide guidance for teachers to understand how to gradually build students' abilities to adapt language choices to purpose, task, and audience when speaking and writing?
   • Does the language scope and sequence explicitly reflect opportunities to read, write, listen to and interact with others using the essential language multiple times over the course of the unit?
   • What differentiation guidance could be built into lessons to support students at varying levels of proficiency?
   • What topics, content, or pedagogical strategies will leverage students' backgrounds, life experiences, and cultures?
     
     
4. Assessment Planning:
   
   
   • How will you incorporate guidance on formative assessments (e.g. look fors and listen fors) that provide feedback on improving disciplinary language?
   • When and how will students receive strategic opportunities for revising their language use?

Conclusion:

A scope and sequence that incorporates language development is integral to creating evidence-based instructional materials. It ensures that essential academic language is amplified, modeled, and progresses logically from simpler to more complex forms. While this list of questions is not exhaustive, it serves as a starting point for discussions with colleagues about embedding language development opportunities in your instructional materials. A linguistically responsive curriculum is vital in addressing educational inequities and centering on MLL student assets and experiences.

By prioritizing both content and language in your instructional design, you can help ensure that all students are equipped to succeed in today’s demanding academic landscape.

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