The key components
WIDA (World-class Instructional Design and Assessment) is a system developed by 20 states to evaluate the language proficiency of primary and secondary school students whose native language is not English. The biggest difference from the current general language ability evaluation system is that this system not only measures students' English ability, but also measures students' English language ability in the four subjects of Chinese, mathematics, science and social studies, that is to say, it measures students' language ability in learning other school subjects, to help students not only learn English well, but also learn other subjects well in English。
In China, due to the particularity of teaching in international schools, the existing national unified examination cannot be used as the academic evaluation of students in the school. Although some schools adopt some mainstream third-party evaluation as their admission basis and testing means in the learning process, most schools still rely on their own research and development standards for evaluation.
On the one hand, this is not conducive to the school finding its teaching problems, on the other hand, it will cause students to be unable to have a clear judgment of their learning status among all students of the same age group, and even cause students/parents to distrust the school's teaching situation, so WIDA is a good choice.
WIDA English includes the DC Standard for EL language development for kindergarten through 12th grade
The language development framework includes:
• Social and instructional languages
• The language of language arts
• Mathematical language
• Science language
• Language for social studies
WIDA's curriculum standards are concerned with being close to students' lives. Classify the situations encountered by students in their daily lives, and then consider what they may do (or what problems they need to solve) in these scenarios, and then apply the language knowledge (vocabulary, sentences and discourse) through the four language activities of listening, speaking, reading and writing. In this way, these activities can be combined with language skills and knowledge, and the two are regarded as the means of activity completion, thus realizing how to learn how to do, how to learn how to teach, that is, "learn by doing". Their evaluation methods are therefore unified with the activities themselves. That is, how to evaluate a student's language ability depends on whether he can complete the activity. From the perspective of teaching, teachers can find teaching materials according to the corresponding topics, and then design teaching objectives according to the functions pointed out in the curriculum standards, combined with the materials. The language point becomes the means to realize these functions. In this way, the teaching of vocabulary and grammar breaks away from the traditional model of only teaching pronunciation, meaning, discrimination and spelling. Instead, more emphasis is placed on the function-function - of specific language forms in specific contexts (for example, why should exclamation sentences be used? Why should past tense be used?)
Apply it in lesson planning and instruction
WIDA English Language Proficiency (ELP) standards serve as a curriculum system and instructional guidelines for Stroke tool design. These standards help educators determine students' English language Ability, and how to properly motivate students to reach higher levels
Figure 1 above is the general description of WIDA's language ability index grading for second language learners in grades 6-12. It can be seen that the corresponding description of each level is very logical, and the three sentences correspond to the three dimensions of vocabulary, sentence and discourse. Examples of Topics and Genres are shown in Figure 2. This is what we always talk about, and of course, teachers are not limited by this at all, and what they give is just an example of how to teach students to use language to achieve a better life.
Some classroom practices to embrace linguistic and cultural diversity:
• Differentiate the language used for instruction so students can access the content.
• Differentiate learning processes to allow students to demonstrate understanding of content without language being a barrier.
• Differentiate the language of assessments to ensure they are valid measures of students understanding of content.
• Modify the environment to facilitate and encourage student interaction.
• Create a language-rich environment throughout the school day to promote the acquisition of academic language of all students.
• Lower the affective filter for multilingual learners by asking linguistically appropriate
questions, avoiding overcorrection and allowing for multiple ways to communicate.
• Adopt a “two by ten” technique of talking with each student for two minutes each day, ten days in a row, about any subject he or she is interested in.
• Value and display student work in the classroom and throughout the school.
Some classroom practices supporting academic language growth:
• Identify and explicitly teach the essential academic vocabulary of the content in context.
• Address the syntactical rules of English when appropriate.
• Integrate the delivery of all content through the four domains, listening, speaking, reading and writing.
• Organize student interactions into varied combinations of pair/cooperative/group work.
• Allow for flexible grouping that changes depending on the task and linguistic needs of students.
• Incorporate learning styles and multiple intelligences in instruction.
• Diverge from the prepared lesson plan when a ‘teachable moment’ presents itself.
• Use a variety of linguistic supports, including visual and graphic supports, interactive supports, and home language supports whenever possible and appropriate.
where and how the framework addresses socio-cultural competence
Around 300 international school members from more than 80 countries participate in WIDA's English Development Framework and Assessment Program. Member schools use the components of the WIDA framework as tools to support language learning and academic achievement. There are three WIDA English proficiency assessments used by most international schools:
W-APT (screener)
WIDA screener Paper (screener)
WIDA MODEL (summative)
A total of 58 schools in China use WIDA as a student assessment tool, including 27 schools for children of foreigners, 28 private schools and 3 public schools. Although the number of schools introduced by private schools and foreign children's schools is the same, in terms of the overall proportion, the proportion of private schools participating in external evaluation is still small compared with foreign children's schools.
Given that international schools operate in a different environment than the United States, WIDA invited educators in each country to conduct a review of the standards to determine how well WIDA's English Language Development (ELD) standards match the educational programs of schools outside the United States
Teachers will analyze the standards and components of the framework at all levels according to their teaching background and teach in all content areas, as well as provide feedback on the cultural appropriateness of tasks and activities, the grade relevance of thematic languages such as example topics, context, and the practicability of each component of the standard framework.
WIDA has ample standard cases and instructions, detailed study and exam instructions. Its "standard reference" includes assessment structure, language standard, grade level, language test category, etc., and has different requirements for different levels of language ability.
