Authorized WIDA CLIMBS Trainer
As a firm believer in WIDA and its Can Do Philosophy, I am excited to be an authorized WIDA CLIMBS Trainer (Content and Language Integration as a Means of Bridging Success).
WIDA CLIMBS helped our staff unify our approach to helping ELLs develop academic language and ensure their access to challenging grade-level content. Through this collaboration, we were able to support our students in raising WIDA scores an average of one full level per student in 2018-19!
I delivered WIDA CLIMBS to Daystar Academy’s three schools throughout the 2018-19 school year and facilitated the certification of over 30 staff members.
During this time, as a professional community we developed a common vocabulary which with to promote success with our 400+ multilingual learners and we engaged in the following endeavors:
Examining the connections between culture and language- Considering the culture of collaboration in our local contexts
- Describing principles of acquisition and learning
- Examining the features of academic language
- Exploring the connections between language acquisition principles and WIDA ELD practices
- Exploring how academic language varies across subject areas and domains
- Developing differentiation for language
- Investigating the language demands of texts and tasks
- Recognizing effective feedback practices
- Providing effectivefeedback to language learners
- Discussing learning strategies
- Developing instruction andlearning strategies for ELLs
- Examining scaffolding strategies
- Identifying scaffolding strategies in practice
- Reflecting on peer observations
- Planning differentiated lessons using WIDA framework
As Daystar Academy is a WIDA consortium member, I have sent several teachers to the WIDA Institute. Further, our team has been working with WIDA Can Do Descriptors and Performance Definitions for two years. We were excited to take this next step in developing our school-wide
approach to serving ELLs through collaboration and best practices.