What is WIDA and what are WIDA Standards?
WIDA stands for World-Class Instructional Design and Assessment and WIDA standards are used for WIDA ELL Assessments to deliver high-quality education to English language learners. If you are an ESL teacher, you should know about WIDA because they are a great resource for you.
What does WIDA do?
WIDA offers assessments to measure students’ progress in English language development.
The WIDA Model is a suite of assessments for grades K-12.
WIDA also offers the WIDA Screener on-demand assessment is designed to help educators decide whether an incoming student in Grades 1-12 would benefit from language support services.
What do we use WIDA standards for?
WIFDA scores can be used to predict student performance on ACCESS for ELLs.
What are the WIDA English Language Development Standards?
How does WIDA score?
WIDA Scores
WIDA MODEL scores are reported for all four domains (Listening, Reading, Speaking, Writing). In addition, score reports include three composite scores:
- Oral Language
- 50% Listening
- 50% Speaking
- Literacy
- 50% Reading
- 50% Writing
- Overall
- 35% Reading
- 35% Writing
- 15% Listening
- 15% Speaking
WIDA score reports are produced at the individual student level only.
WIDA Standards for your Online Classroom
For your online students, consider becoming a member of WIDA and using the their online screener test to help gauge your students’ ESL proficiency. This will help you create lessons plans that focus on your students’ needs.
WIDA Screener Online
WIDA Screener Online is an English language proficiency assessment given to new students in Grades 1–12 to help educators identify whether they are English language learners (ELLs). It is available for free to WIDA Consortium members.
WIDA also offers a WIDA Screener Online workshop that can help you learn how to administer the test and utilize the score in your online classroom.
WIDA Standards and Teacher Licensure Exams
You will also need to know WIDA standards and be familiar with WIDA’s assessments to pass state licensure exams to become an ELL (ESL) teacher in public schools in the USA. If you are interested in being a state-certified teacher, knowledge of WIDA is paramount as you will be utilizing WIDA as a resource often.
