Six new free WIDA Webinars

By Hannah Haynes

We’re bringing you six new WIDA Webinars! These are free professional learning opportunities that span a wide range of topics related to multilingual learners. You’ll have a chance to tune in to a webinar that will provide strategies for supporting newcomers, one that will explore reading instruction and one that will look at accessibility and help you determine whether a learner should take ACCESS or Alternate ACCESS.

All of these will be recorded and available for you to watch at any time. Read on to learn more about the six webinars.

ACCESS or Alternate ACCESS?

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.

Wednesday, August 28 at 10:00-11:15 AM CT

Guideposts for Reading Instruction with Multilingual Learners

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.

Wednesday, September 25 at 10:00-11:15 AM CT

Let’s play! Joyful learning for multilingual children in preK-third grade

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.

Tuesday, December 3 at 2:30-3:45 PM CT

The Key Language Uses in Bilingual Writing

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.

Thursday, January 23, 2025, at 3:00-4:10 PM CT

Strategies for supporting multilingual newcomers

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.

Tuesday, March 11, 2025, at 11:00 AM-12:15 PM CT

Aligning AI for Multilingual Learners: Integrating the WIDA ELD Standards Framework into Prompts

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!

Thursday, May 8, 2025, at 1:30-2:45 PM CT