Align CI with Proficiency Standards in Just a Few Steps!

Align CI with Proficiency Standards in Just a Few Steps!

Are you finding it challenging to align your comprehension-based instruction (CI) with proficiency standards? If you’re feeling overwhelmed trying to match what happens in your classroom with how proficiency is measured, you’re not alone. This can feel like a tough balancing act, especially when you’re striving to create meaningful, engaging lessons without losing sight of the larger goal: language proficiency.

Here’s the good news: It doesn’t have to be hard. In fact, with just a few key strategies, you can seamlessly align your CI classroom with proficiency standards, making assessment, grading, and overall student progress much simpler. In this article, I’ll walk you through clear, actionable steps to align your teaching with proficiency standards, showing you how to make it work effortlessly in your CI classroom. By the end, you’ll feel confident in your ability to not only align with these standards but to use them as a powerful tool to enhance your students' language learning journey.

Identify Key Proficiency Standards for Your Class

Before diving into strategies, it’s important to start by identifying what you’re aiming for. Proficiency standards, such as the ACTFL or CEFR scales, provide a roadmap for language development. Whether your students are at the novice, intermediate, or advanced level, the first step is understanding what skills are expected at each stage.

1. Map CI Activities to Proficiency Descriptors

Once you’ve identified your proficiency target, map your CI activities to these standards. For example, if you’re teaching at an intermediate level, students should be working toward producing paragraph-length discourse. This could mean focusing on retelling stories, expanding on details in picture talks, or participating in extended conversations during TPRS (Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling) sessions.

Quick Win:

• Task: Take a lesson you’re already teaching and adjust the expectations to align with the proficiency level. If you’re doing story listening, ask intermediate students to add their own details to the story or predict what happens next, aiming for paragraph-length responses.

2. Create Clear "Can-Do" Statements

Translate these proficiency goals into student-friendly "Can-Do" statements. These are short, actionable goals that students can aim for, helping them take ownership of their progress. For example, for a Novice High student, a Can-Do statement might be, “I can describe familiar topics using phrases and simple sentences.” Use these statements to guide your lesson planning and assessments.

Quick Win:

• Task: Write 3-5 Can-Do statements based on the proficiency level of your class and share them with your students. Let them know these are their goals for the unit.

3. Use Backward Design

Backward design is a powerful tool for aligning CI lessons with proficiency standards. Start by determining the end goal: what proficiency level do you want your students to reach by the end of a unit or term? Then, design your CI activities to build toward that goal.

Quick Win:

• Task: Plan your next unit by choosing a specific proficiency outcome, and then design the lessons to gradually build the skills needed to meet that outcome.

Develop Authentic, Standards-Based Assessments

Once your lessons are aligned with proficiency standards, the next step is to create assessments that measure progress in a way that reflects what your students can truly do in the language. Instead of relying on traditional quizzes or tests that might focus too heavily on isolated grammar points, you’ll want to design assessments that mirror real-world language use.

1. Design Proficiency-Aligned Assessments

One way to ensure your assessments are aligned with proficiency standards is to replace traditional tests with more communicative, proficiency-based tasks. For example, instead of a multiple-choice vocabulary quiz, ask students to listen to a story and answer questions based on their comprehension, or have them write a summary of the story.

Quick Win:

• Task: Transform an upcoming test into a proficiency-based assessment. For example, if you have a quiz on food vocabulary, turn it into a task where students describe their favorite meal and its ingredients.

2. Incorporate Performance-Based Tasks

Performance-based assessments ask students to use the language in real-world contexts, which naturally aligns with proficiency standards. For instance, you could ask students to create dialogues, perform role-plays, or write letters in the target language. These tasks require students to demonstrate a deeper understanding of language and show proficiency beyond memorization.

Quick Win:

• Task: Have students complete a simple performance task. For a novice class, this could be introducing themselves in the target language. For intermediate students, it could be planning a short trip and describing their itinerary.

3. Use Rubrics That Match Proficiency Levels

Rubrics are essential tools for grading proficiency-based assessments. Develop rubrics that reflect the key elements of each proficiency level. For example, an ACTFL rubric for intermediate learners might focus on whether students are using strings of sentences and maintaining communication despite errors.

Quick Win:

• Task: Create a rubric that evaluates your students’ language based on their proficiency level. Use this rubric for your next writing or speaking assessment.

Leverage Formative Assessments to Guide Learning

Formative assessments, or assessments that happen during learning, are essential for ensuring that students are on track to meet proficiency goals. These are low-stakes ways of checking in with your students regularly and providing feedback that helps them progress.

1. Use Regular Check-Ins Aligned with Standards

One of the easiest ways to align your classroom with proficiency standards is to conduct regular check-ins that assess student progress toward those standards. For example, after a CI activity, ask comprehension questions, or have students summarize what they understood from a story.

Quick Win:

• Task: Build in one formative assessment per class. This could be a comprehension check after a story listening session, or a simple partner activity where students ask and answer questions.

2. Provide Immediate, Actionable Feedback

Timely feedback is key to helping students move up the proficiency scale. After each CI activity, give feedback that focuses on how well they’re progressing toward their proficiency goals. Instead of pointing out errors, highlight what they’re doing right based on their proficiency level and what they need to improve next.

Quick Win:

• Task: After your next formative assessment, give each student one strength and one area to improve, aligned with their proficiency goals.

3. Adjust CI Input Based on Student Responses

Formative assessments also give you valuable information about how to adjust your input. If students are struggling to understand a certain type of language, adjust the complexity of your input or slow down your speech. On the flip side, if students are excelling, you can ramp up the difficulty and challenge them more.

Quick Win:

• Task: After conducting a formative assessment, make one small adjustment to your input based on student responses. This could mean simplifying vocabulary, repeating key phrases, or adding visual aids to support understanding.

Incorporate Differentiated CI Tasks to Address Varied Proficiency Levels

Not all students in your class will be at the same proficiency level, which is where differentiation comes in. By differentiating tasks, you can ensure that all students are working toward proficiency standards that are appropriate for their level.

1. Vary Input Complexity

To meet the needs of students at different proficiency levels, vary the complexity of the input you provide. For beginners, use simpler sentences, gestures, and visuals. For more advanced students, offer more complex narratives and challenge them to infer meaning from context.

Quick Win:

• Task: In your next CI activity, offer two versions of the same input: one simplified and one more complex. Have students choose the version that matches their proficiency level.

2. Create Tiered Tasks

Design tiered tasks that allow students to work at different levels within the same activity. For example, during a storytelling activity, beginners might focus on identifying key vocabulary, while advanced students could work on summarizing the entire story or predicting the ending.

Quick Win:

• Task: For your next class, create a tiered task. Start with a basic comprehension activity, then offer a more advanced extension for students who need a challenge.

3. Use Flexible Grouping

Group students by proficiency levels for certain tasks, allowing them to engage with CI input at a level that’s right for them. For example, during a picture talk, you could have beginners describe basic elements of the picture, while more advanced students create more detailed narratives.

Quick Win:

• Task: Try flexible grouping in your next class. Group students by proficiency level and assign different tasks based on their abilities.

Integrate Standards into Daily CI Practice

Finally, one of the most effective ways to align your CI classroom with proficiency standards is to make it a daily habit. By consistently targeting proficiency goals in your lessons, you’ll create a classroom environment where both you and your students are focused on language growth.

1. Target Specific Proficiency Goals in Daily CI Routines

Whether you’re doing a picture talk, a TPRS session, or story listening, make sure each activity has a specific proficiency goal attached. For instance, if you’re working with intermediate students, aim for activities that encourage them to communicate using strings of sentences or paragraphs.

Quick Win:

• Task: For your next class, identify one proficiency goal you want your students to reach by the end of the lesson. Make sure your CI activity directly targets that goal.

2. Track Proficiency Progression

Tracking student progress helps both you and your students see where they are on the proficiency scale and what they need to do to move forward. Use simple tools like a progress chart or portfolio where students can record their achievements and set goals.

Quick Win:

• Task: Introduce a student progress tracker. At the end of each week, have students self-assess their proficiency and reflect on what they need to improve.

3. Provide Scaffolded Output Opportunities

Giving students scaffolded opportunities to produce language is essential for developing proficiency. Start with sentence frames or guided conversations, and gradually reduce support as students become more confident in using the language on their own.

Quick Win:

• Task: In your next class, introduce a scaffolded speaking or writing activity. For beginners, provide sentence starters. For advanced students, encourage more open-ended responses.

Conclusion

Aligning your CI classroom with proficiency standards doesn’t have to be difficult. By focusing on a few key strategies—mapping your activities to standards, developing proficiency-based assessments, using formative feedback, differentiating tasks, and integrating standards into your daily routines—you’ll be well on your way to creating a classroom that promotes language growth and success. These concrete steps will not only make your teaching more effective but will also give your students a clear path to achieving their language goals.

If you're ready to take your CI teaching to the next level and dive even deeper into how to align your instruction with proficiency standards, join us at the COMPREHENDED! 2025 Conference. It's an incredible opportunity to learn from experts, connect with other educators, and gain even more strategies to make your classroom a success. Register now at https://comprehended.co/register for access to all the sessions, resources, and tools you need to keep growing as a CI teacher.

By implementing even a few of the strategies mentioned here, you'll start seeing more alignment between what you're teaching and how your students are assessed, making grading easier and more meaningful. Most importantly, your students will be on a clearer path to achieving language proficiency.

Key Takeaways

1. Aligning CI with proficiency standards is achievable by mapping your activities to specific proficiency goals. Break down proficiency descriptors and ensure each CI lesson is designed to move students toward those goals, making standards more tangible and practical.
2. Use proficiency-aligned, performance-based assessments to measure students’ real-world language abilities. Replace traditional quizzes with tasks like storytelling, dialogue creation, or comprehension-based assessments to reflect students' true proficiency.
3. Incorporate regular formative assessments to guide instruction and provide timely feedback. Regular check-ins help you adjust your input and ensure students stay on track toward proficiency goals, while immediate, actionable feedback boosts student progress.
4. Differentiate CI tasks to meet the varied proficiency levels of your students. Offering varied input complexity, tiered tasks, and flexible grouping ensures that all students are challenged appropriately and can progress at their own pace.
5. Integrate proficiency standards into daily CI practice and track progress consistently. By targeting specific proficiency goals in every lesson and using tools like progress trackers or student portfolios, you create a classroom environment focused on growth and language success.