The recent workshop on WIDA Made Simple for the Classroom for the Santa Rosa School District in Florida was practical and applicable for all teachers across K-12 content areas. Participants were engaged throughout the day in ways to align the WIDA philosophy, principles, and standards to their daily lessons. They were able to make connections between their teaching practices and WIDA’s mission and beliefs. Jane Govoni, Ph.D. and Bea Palls presented two one-day workshops to introduce WIDA’s guiding principles, philosophy, standards, and descriptions of varied English proficiency levels.
The overarching goal was for all teachers to be able to plan and create language rich academic environments for English language learners (ELLs) at varied proficiency levels through the elements of the Model Performance Indicators (MPIs) and an alignment to the Florida Standards. Activities and discussions enabled all participants to walk away with specific techniques to support the learning of their ELLs across all content areas. In addition, participants were at ease in knowing how to implement these new strategies and techniques to support all students in their classrooms.
Some of their comments were as follows:
This is the first ELL workshop that showed how to differentiate between different levels of English proficiency – very practical!
Plan to design instruction and assessments differently based on this workshop.
As a result of the training, I will put a heavier emphasis on vocabulary introduction and development not just for ELLs, but for all my students.
I will now be able to create assessments based on students’ proficiency levels.
The materials were presented in an engaging way to show me a good way to look at how to modify my lessons.
I learned to grade for content knowledge and not language acquisition.
I enjoyed sharing with the other teachers – especially on my grade level.
The WIDA Standards are easy to integrate into my instruction!
I learned a new level of knowledge to use with all students and ways to enhance their learning experience.
Sincerely,
Jane Govoni, Ph.D. and Bea Palls
ESOL in Higher Education, LLC