CoCoMo Institute

A few months ago, I told you about the Common Core and More (CoCoMo) Institute. Thank you for your overwhelming response from across the Consortium! 

 I am happy to report that the institute is taking place from June 11-15, 2012 in Santa Fe, New Mexico. More than 85 educators from 14 Consortium states are hard at work learning about the Common Core State Standards and WIDA’s English Language Development (ELD) Standards. 

Help Desk Helpers - Part Two

Ever wondered who is on the other end of the line when you contact the WIDA Help Desk?  In last week's post, you met Michelle.  This week, meet the rest of the WIDA Help Desk staff. You'll  learn about some of the common questions that the Help Desk receives and the WIDA states they would most like to visit.  Enjoy!

Spanish teachers – check out the new Continuos del Desarrollo Lingüístico (SLD Standards)

Two years of hard work are paying off and everyone (consortium and non-consortium members) will be able to reap the benefits soon.   

So what is SALSA? It is a collaborative project between the Illinois State Board of Education, WIDA and the Center for Applied Linguistics.   It stands for Spanish Academic Language Standards and Assessment.  As the name implies, there are two parts to the project.  The first part has

What Do We Do With All of These Standards?

 It comes as no surprise to you that good instruction is grounded in standards.  But when it comes to educating ELLs, we are often talking about three or more sets of standards.  There are state content standards, Common Core Standards, and English language development standards.  If you also provide instruction in Spanish, you have the Spanish language development standards and Spanish language arts standards.  Often we are left wondering how these sets of standards relate to each other and how we could best use them to guide our instruction and classroom assessments.  For those of us living in states that have adopted the Common Core Standards, we need to set aside some time to understand these standards and begin to integrate them into our teaching practices.

Judy Sauri, principal of Edwards School in Chicago, recently expressed