WIDA

WIDA is the organization that produces the standards for EL instruction. Information for teachers and administrators can be found in the Resource Guide. You can also search the 2007 standards here. The standards are a combination of 6 parts:

1. The WIDA Can Do Philosophy is based on the belief that all students bring to their learning cultural, experiential, and linguistic practices, skills, and ways of knowing from their homes and communities. WIDA believes that as educators, our role is to craft instruction that capitalizes on and builds upon these assets. For more information, visit Nashoba's page on Culturally Responsive Teaching.
2. The Guiding Principles of Language Development are WIDA’s core beliefs about language development, regarding academic language in the learning environment and at a student's level.
3. The Features of Academic Language in Sociocultural Contexts highlight academic language features across three dimensions: discourse, sentence, and word/phrase and six levels of language proficiency. They also consider the various components of the learning environment (grade level content, purposes for language use, role relationships with others, and other factors).
4. The Performance Definitions are the criteria for the language ELs can process, understand, produce, or use at all levels. WIDA has performance definitions for Listening and Reading (receptive language), and Speaking and Writing (expressive language), grades K-12.
5. The Can Do Descriptors show what learners can do at each level of language proficiency (1-6) and across the five language development standards (Social and Instructional Language; and the Language of Language Arts, Science, Social Studies, and Mathematics). The Can Do Descriptors are made more accessible in the following booklets:

• Can Do Booklet, Grades PreK-K
• Can Do Booklet, Grades 1-2
• Can Do Booklet, Grades 3-5
• Can Do Booklet, Grades 6-8
• Can Do Booklet, Grades 9-12

6. The Standards Matrices help educators envision what language development might look like in K–12 classrooms across levels of language proficiency for each of the five standards.

Please contact your building EL teacher with questions or requests for more information.