Interested in presenting at the WIDA conference?

The word is out!

WIDA announced last week that they will be holding a national conference from October 17 to October 19, 2013. I am so excited about so many aspects of this conference. It will be in Milwaukee, my second favorite city on Lake Michigan.  The conference will be open to all educators, regardless of their membership in the WIDA Consortium.  The conference theme is Language Learner Success: Building on Strengths.  I can’t wait to see what the sessions will be about! Speaking of which, guess who might be presenting at the conference? 

First Look at the Early Language Development Standards

Have you heard?  WIDA is creating Early Language Development Standards for children who are 2.5 - 5.5 years old.  On November 29, 2012, practitioners from several states gathered in a Chicago suburb to preview these new standards.   Similar to the K-12 English Language Development Standards, the Early Language Standards will contain the following components:

•    Six Early Language Development Standards
•    Two language domains (receptive and productive)
•    Three early language development levels in English
•    Three age groups
•    Two features of developmentally appropriate academic language
•    Performance definitions that define each level in each age group
•    Model Performance Indicators (MPIs)

Early in the day each table was asked to create a visual that would represent the relationship between the various components.  Here are two examples:

The Puma table visualized a tree with two trunks.  One trunk represents the receptive language