WIDA Webinars
Explore essential topics in multilingual learner education
WIDA Webinars are a new, free, virtual learning opportunity that will offer educators insights and resources on a variety of topics relevant to educators of multilingual learners. Here’s what you can expect:
- Engage with WIDA's expert staff, researchers and facilitators.
- Dive into specific topics crucial for multilingual education.
- Ask questions and interact in real time during live sessions.
Can't make it live? No worries! All webinars will be recorded and readily available below for your convenience.
Upcoming
- ACCESS or Alternate ACCESS?
August 28, 2024
10:00-11:15 AM CT
Not sure whether a multilingual learner should take ACCESS for ELLs or WIDA Alternate ACCESS? Join WIDA experts who will walk you through the decision-making process based on examples of student characteristics. You'll leave the webinar with newfound insights and strategies that you can take back to your colleagues.
- Guideposts for Reading Instruction with Multilingual Learners
September 2024
In this WIDA webinar, we will explore five critical, research-based aspects or “guideposts” of reading instruction for multilingual learners. For each guidepost, attendees will receive an overview of the current research and strategies and tips for how it translates to classroom instruction.
A registration link for the September 2024 webinar is coming in July.
- Let’s play! Joyful learning for multilingual children in PreK-third grade
December 3, 2024
2:30-3:45 PM CT
What is joyful learning? How can you integrate play for multilingual children into your everyday teaching practices? These are a few of the questions we will address as we explore play for multilingual children in PreK-third grade. This WIDA Webinar will provide a brief introduction to Teaching in PreK-3, an emerging WIDA topic area, followed by a specific focus on play. We will discuss what joyful learning is, why it is ideal for multilingual children’s language development and learning, and present ideas about how you might integrate more joyful learning into PreK-third grade classrooms and programs.
- The Key Language Uses in Bilingual Writing
January 23, 2025
3:00-4:10 PM CT
In this webinar we’ll examine the Key Language Uses in writing in both Spanish and English. You’ll go through an analysis of bilingual writing examples and mentor texts using the lens of the Key Language Uses and los usos clave del lenguaje del Marco DALE.
- Strategies for supporting multilingual newcomers
March 11, 2025
11:00 AM-12:15 PM CT
Multilingual newcomers are the fastest growing demographic across U.S. school systems, arriving in K-12 classrooms at increased rates in more and different locations than ever before. These students enter our buildings offering unique cultural and linguistic assets while also possessing distinct academic, social-emotional and linguistic needs. Let’s meet to discuss how we can build and strengthen systems that promote multilingual newcomers’ success in classrooms across the consortium! During this webinar, you will be introduced to the latest trends relating to our nation's multilingual newcomers, engage in research-backed approaches centering their learning, and participate in goal setting for future programming with multilingual newcomers and their families in mind.
- Aligning AI for Multilingual Learners: Integrating the WIDA ELD Standards Framework into Prompts
May 8, 2025
1:30-2:45 PM CT
In this interactive webinar, we'll explore how to use Artificial Intelligence (AI) effectively to create engaging and standards-based activities for your multilingual learners. We'll focus on techniques to avoid generic results and tailor AI prompts to the specific needs of multilingual learners, aligned with the WIDA English Language Development (ELD) Standards Framework. This webinar is designed to be interactive, with opportunities to crowd-source examples for using AI effectively to promote content-based language learning for your multilingual students. Share one example prompt; get 10+ in return! Join the conversation and collaborate with fellow language specialists!
Recordings
- Using Data and Research to Inform Practical Issues in EL Proficiency and Growth
This session examines ways in which large-scale assessment data can be used to extract important, practical and useful insights on average patterns and high-level trends in English learners’ education and academic outcomes.
More specifically, we will examine the latest data on the impact of COVID-19 on English learners’ proficiency as measured by ACCESS, and how the pandemic has exacerbated some of the existing disparities in outcomes across various student groups. We will examine differences across student groups based on grade-level, ethno-racial, gender, ability-based, institutional and other intersectionalities before and after the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Administrator Supplement: WIDA ELD Standards Framework Implementation, What, Why, and How?
The newly released Administrator Supplement: WIDA English Language Development Standards Framework Implementation Guide offers practical guidance for administrators who wish to focus on strategic and programmatic aspects of standards implementation.
This webinar introduces the supplement, talks about its purpose and discusses four key areas for systemic implementation: professional learning, collaboration for content and language integration, curriculum and instruction, and data and assessment. Additionally, we will highlight and explore a variety of resources from the supplement, including WIDA resources, implementation discussion tools, reflective prompts, questions and stories of practice.
- Desarrollando el español: Authentic Spanish language development with Marco DALE
In this webinar recording, the writers and developers of Marco de los estándares del desarrollo auténtico del lenguaje español de WIDA (Marco DALE) showcase its components and its relationship to the other WIDA language frameworks and provide a walkthrough for educators to adopt and utilize Marco DALE in their classroom. Viewers will gain new insights into understanding Marco DALE and obtain resources to support its implementation.
- WIDA ELD Framework Implementation: What, When, and How?
The newly released implementation guide for the WIDA English Language Development Standards, 2020 Edition, offers practical guidance on ways to use the different resources in the WIDA ELD Standards Framework. Focusing on two components of the WIDA ELD Standards Framework, language features and proficiency level descriptors, we will examine a science unit plan and consider when and how language features and proficiency level descriptors can be used to support multilingual learners in developing both their content knowledge and their language proficiency.
WIDA ELD Framework Implementation webinar transcript
View and download the Implementation Guide: WIDA ELD Standards Framework
- Desarrollando el español: Guiding bilingual instructional planning with Marco DALE
Bi/multilingual students across a variety of program models and instructional contexts need instruction that uplifts and recognizes their assets through a transcultural and translingual approach. The components of the Marco de los estándares del desarrollo auténtico del lenguaje español de WIDA (Marco DALE) can support educator’s planning processes for culture and language-rich instruction. Join the WIDA Español team on this WIDA Webinar to explore and connect transculturalismo, multiliteracidades, and intentional planning for language development.
This WIDA Webinar is presented primarily in Spanish and builds on the foundational webinar, Desarrollando el español: Authentic Spanish language development with Marco DALE, presented in November 2023.
Guiding bilingual instructional planning with Marco DALE webinar transcript
What Participants Say...
"This was a great PD to help connect content with language development. Particularly, the connection between PLDs and scaffolds was necessary and appreciated."
"The WIDA ELD Framework Implementation PL modeled unit planning in a clear and crisp manner and provided a practical model for teachers to follow. I would recommend this as an excellent use of teacher time."