Share a Lesson and Be Entered into a Drawing for Amazon Gift Cards

Have your eye on some new supplies for your classroom?  Thinking about buying a new book?  WIDA is giving away one $25 Amazon gift card each week from now until March 1, 2013.  The grand prize winner will be drawn on March 1, 2013.  That person will win a $100 Amazon gift card.  So how do you enter this contest?

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

It’s Our First Blog Birthday!

It’s hard to believe that it has been one year since we launched this blog!  Thanks to you, it has been a resounding success.  Over 38,000 people have visited the WIDA blog since November 7, 2011.  Just last month, we had over 8,000 page views. 

 Join us as we celebrate!  

Check Out the 2012 WIDA Video Contest Winners

Several months ago I told you about the WIDA video contest and encouraged you to submit a video. Over sixty of you grabbed your video cameras and answered the call.   

Everyone who entered will be receiving a copy of the 2012 edition of the English language development standards.  The top four entries (which included a tie) will receive cash prizes and a scholarship for the awardee and a colleague to attend a 2012 WIDA Professional Development Academy. 

Watch all of the winning videos here.

This year’s winners are:

Tips on Creating Content Area Word Walls

Do you have a word wall in your classroom?  Is it dedicated to high frequency words?  What about content area words and phrases?  What challenges have you had with supporting your students’ language growth visually in your room? 

When I was teaching, I struggled with the best way to use the wall space in my classroom. I had a “traditional” word wall on the back wall which held many of the high frequency words in English in alphabetical order. Other walls were dedicated to various content areas or particular projects we were working on in class.  My bulletin boards held student work samples and information about upcoming events.  While the various content area posters and visual aids were helpful for students, I always felt like I was missing something.  It wasn’t until I started providing professional development full time that I stumbled across the idea of a content area word wall.  Today I’ll share with you some of my favorite tips, tricks and links for word walls dedicated to learning the language of the content areas.

Using the CAN DO Descriptors in a High School Math Class

Image: Grant Cochrane / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

WIDA’s CAN DO Descriptors are one of my all-time favorite documents to share – especially with mainstream teachers.   They are a wonderful resource for understanding the language acquisition process and brainstorming ideas for differentiating classroom instruction and assessment.  Some of you know that I teach a graduate course on assessment of ELLs.  Recently I asked my students (in-service teachers pursuing their ESL or bilingual endorsements in Illinois) to choose one ELL that they currently teach.  Then I asked them to list the CAN DO Descriptors that correlate to that student’s current English language proficiency (ELP) level.  Lastly, I asked them to list ways they could differentiate their instruction and classroom assessments to better align with that student’s level of ELP. 

Using Rubrics and Checklists for Language Proficiency Assessments

Teachers often tell me that one of the trickiest aspects of designing classroom-based assessments is to identify what we want to assess and then how to document it. 

Recently I blogged about common assessments and ELLs.  In that post, I mentioned that there are two main types of assessments for ELLs –assessments that measure academic content knowledge and assessments that document language proficiency.  So as we design our assessments we need to ask ourselves “Am I assessing my students’ knowledge of the content or their ability to speak/read/write about this topic?”  

Most school districts have multiple assessments for academic content knowledge.  Typically there is a district assessment plan or schedule that details when and how often to give various content assessments.  End of the unit assessments, quarterly or semester assessments and yearly assessments of content knowledge are set. 

But what about assessing our students’ language proficiency? 

Get those videos in by April 15, 2012!

Image: Ambro / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

What would you do with $1,000 or $500 or even $250 in prize money?    Which WIDA Professional Development Academy would you go to -if it were free?  If you win, you could be faced with those very questions.  All you have to do is submit your entry for the WIDA video contest.  

WIDA is looking for short videos (5-10 minutes) of instruction or assessment of ELLs.  I wrote about a possible approach to this contest in a recent post.  The best news is that the deadline has been extended to April 15, 2012.  Now you can wait until your spring break to put the finishing touches on that video before you mail it.  Click here for more details.

If you have additional questions about the video contest, please e-mail Connie North (cenorth@wisc.edu).

Happy filming!

Written by: Tammy King

The Language of Math... and National π Day

For those of us that teach elementary school, we might have missed the celebration this week.  No, I’m not talking about the NCAA play –in games in Dayton Tuesday night.  I’m talking about the festivities on March 14^th – otherwise known as National π (Pi) Day.  You may remember from algebra that pi is the ratio between a circle’s circumference and its diameter.  It is also a crucial part of many math equations.  For example, the area of a

“Off To Class” Book Review

Recently a colleague introduced me to a beautiful book called Off to Class: Incredible and Unusual Schools Around the World written by Susan Hughes.  The book was written for children between the ages of 9-13.  But because of the splendid layout, the intriguing scenarios and gorgeous photographs, this book would be interesting to much older students (and adults).  It certainly kept my attention!

The content of the book is not light and fluffy.  The author, Susan Hughes, begins by stating that the United Nations considers education to be a basic human right.

An Evening With…Dr. Yong Zhao

Every year I am eager to see the “Evening with…” dinner and speaker at the Illinois bilingual conference.  This year we were honored to have Dr. Yong Zhao as our guest speaker. If you have not heard of Dr. Zhao, check out his website or one of his many publications.     

 Photo courtesy of Nicole Conroy

Not only was Dr. Zhao’s presentation insightful, he struck the perfect balance between serious and funny.  As someone who does professional development for a living, I know how difficult that can be. 

Dr. Zhao began his talk by asking the audience – what kind of education do you want to buy for your children?  He provoked us to really think about what is most important when educating our children.  Do we want children who do well on tests or students who show creativity?  In a moment of both humor and complete seriousness, Dr. Zhao mentioned