Michigan Adopts the ELD Standards

In mid-January 2013, the state of Michigan officially adopted the ELD Standards for use in their schools.  Like Utah and Idaho, Michigan will not be participating in other consortium activities.  But their teachers will be able to benefit by using the ELD standards in their lessons.  Speaking of lessons, be sure to check out the new lesson plan share space.  For those of us who have been in the consortium for years and are skilled at infusing the ELD standards into our lessons, this website will be a wonderful place to showcase our work.  For those new to teaching ELLs or new to the consortium, the lesson sharing site will be a wonderful resource.  If you upload a lesson between now and March 1, 2013, you will automatically be entered into a drawing for Amazon gift cards.  For more information on the contest, click here.

Written by: Tammy King

Image: www.wida.us

 

 

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?

Working at WIDA

With so many exciting projects in the works at WIDA, it comes as no surprise that they are in need of a few new team members.   If you are passionate about educating English language learners through high quality standards, assessments, research and professional development for educators, then take a few moments to review the current job openings.  If one (or more) strikes your fancy, then review the

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

Tips for Doing Transformations with the 2012 Amplification

Earlier this year I wrote about some of the new features in the 2012 Amplification of the ELD Standards.  I highlighted the new components, including the example context for language use, cognitive function and topic-related language sections. 

Since then I have conducted several workshops on transformations.  (For those of you new to the ELD Standards, check out these posts:  Transformations – Part 1, Transformation s – Part 2, Q&A on Transformations.)  I have been delighted to see that these same new features actually make it easier for my participants to do transformations.  So today I will be sharing some transformation tips. Some are my tips; some came from my workshop participants.

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!