Putting It All Together: Next Steps for Using the 2020 Edition

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00:34 1 Presentation

46:18 2 When analyzing student work, what's the best tool for providing feedback on that specific task engaging student progress on Speaking or Writing? Should they use the WIDA Speaking Writing Rubric or the Performance Level Descriptors?

Video Transcript

Annemarie Banas: It's being recorded. You can find those recordings on the WIDA ELD Standards page. We have the recordings for the previous three webinars. In addition, there's also transcripts there with links to the different questions that were asked throughout the webinars. And with that I'm going to turn it over to another member of our Standards team Elizabeth Warren our State Relations Specialist for the Midwest.

Elizabeth Warren: Greetings everybody. Good morning or good afternoon. Whatever time it is for you we are so happy that you could join us today for this fourth and final Q&A webinar Putting it All Together: Next Steps for Using the WIDA ELD Standards Framework, 2020 Edition. Annemarie if we can move to the next slide. You’ve met Annemarie our lovely coordinator and tech facilitator. Then we have Lynn Shafer Willner, Fernanda Marinho Kray and myself from the Standards team. And then we have the lovely Justine Kolb joining us from Professional Learning. She and Fernanda will be moderating for us today as Lynn  and I present.

Then if we can move to the next slide again just some housekeeping items. A quick reminder that we're going to be using the chat box to have you jot down your questions. Please do go ahead and direct those messages to everyone, and we’ll respond to your questions during the Q&A time towards the end of the webinar. Then we’ll also be using Mentimeter throughout to have participants respond to webinar activities. You’ll just look for the link in the chat box and open that Mentimeter link in a new tab in order to respond. So with that in mind we're going to go ahead and advance to the next slide, and I’m going to turn things over to Lynn for our first Mentimeter activity.

Lynn Shafer Willner: Alright. Hi, everybody. We’re going to begin with a warm-up activity who’s on the call today. If you look in the chat box there'll be a link that Fernanda will be placing. And one of the tricks I’ve seen with Mentimeter is that you go, and you open it in a new tab because then you can use your keyboard for typing. You can also do this activity from your phone as well. What I’m going to do is I’m going to go and present this or push the slide, and it should be working. We’re wondering where are you calling in from today? And it’s going to appear in a word cloud. If you use your abbreviations, then we can go and see if we have multiple people from the same site or the same country. So we’ve got New Mexico – a lot of folks from Nevada. This is just a fun way to kind of move this forward. Tennessee, awesome. We’ve got a lot of folks from Madison, folks here from WIDA who are also joining us on the call. We’re thrilled to have everyone on the call. Wyoming, welcome. Tennessee. This is great. Florida – folks from Washington State. Welcome to WIDA. We’re thrilled to have you here. Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Hello! Welcome, and thank you so much. You can always use the chat box as the alternate but if you can use the Mentimeter one of the things we’re doing with this as we get to activities later today – we’re going to be able to collate the responses and send them back to you because we're trying to help build your toolkits. So the Mentimeter link is in the chat box. There’s also a code that you can use. Alright, I’m going to move to the next slide.

Okay, there we go. We’re wondering how familiar are you with the 2020 Edition? What that will do is on your screen it’s going to push that over to a new slide, and you open up that new slide. It’s just kind of a fun way to see what’s going on. Folks are doing some initial browsing, starting to read through it. Got some folks about thirty percent who are going in and making notes, thinking about next steps. Excellent. Almost fifty people have responded. Okay, let’s go to the next slide – now this will be a little fun.

We’re going to take your answers from the previous slide, and we’re going to play it out over this new slide. So if you go to Mentimeter it’ll be updated, and then we’ll have some fun animations where we have these dots that are moving around. So just a fun way to look at based on different roles – how familiar are you with the WIDA ELD Standards Framework? And I’m curious with other what role did we miss? So if you wouldn’t mind putting that in the chat box. Now I’m curious. What was the role we didn’t get? Welcome! We see lots of Language Development Specialists, Program Coordinators, Higher Education Researchers, State Education Agency staff. Great to have you here. We’re going to be doing some activities during this webinar. We’ll give you two opportunities if you’d like – you can provide your email address, and we’ll send you the transcript. It’s not being used for any other purpose. We’ve found that with this many people in a webinar and responding via the chat box it can be a little messy. We’re going to be using Mentimeter to be able to show responses on the screen so that you can view them as they’re coming through. And then we can also collate them and send them back so we can support your toolkit. I’m going to leave this open for the next five minutes, and then Elizabeth I’ll turn it back over to you as we go to the presentation.

Elizabeth Warren: Alright. Great, if we can go ahead and advance to the next slide I’ll talk a little bit about today’s focus. Our goal for today is for you to develop resources for integrating the Framework into your current system. So helping you think through how you can talk with others about the 2020 Standards Framework, what resources you might need to add into your personal toolbox in order to do that. In order to help prepare you for those critical conversations with school leaders and colleagues and think about how to explain the 2020 Edition to them and what next steps you might take in relationship to the Framework we’re going to walk you through some scenarios. First is thinking about how the Big Ideas might inform strategic planning at the district and school level. Second is why teach language through content. Third is what might the Key Language Uses offer you through this process and these conversations. And then we’ll share resources with you and allow some time for questions. So if we go ahead and move ahead.

We are going to quickly give you some background information that we hope will be helpful for participating in the three scenarios. These four Big Ideas that you see before you have always been part of the foundations of WIDA ELD Standards since their inception in 2004, but in this Edition, they’re highlighted and brought to the forefront. As part of a call to action to help address systemic challenges that we see in the current educational landscape, the four Big Ideas have been tightly and clearly interwoven throughout the 2020 Framework. We have Equity of Opportunity and Access which we know is essential for multilingual learners’ preparation for college, career – to participate in society fully. Second is Integration of Content and Language which we recognize is critical to the planning and delivery of instruction. Third is Collaboration among Stakeholders because we know it’s a shared responsibility that we all have for educating multilingual learners. And then fourth we have the Functional Approach to Language Development which focuses on the purposeful use of language or language as a meaning making tool. We can go ahead and move ahead.

Okay, as you can see on your screen the Framework is made up of four components that increase in specificity as we work our way inward on this nested graphic representation. So that first and broadest component are the Standards Statements themselves. They offer us that very broad, overarching, conceptual framing of language and content integration. The second component are the Key Language Uses. Those highlight the most prominent and common language uses that we see across the disciplines and provide educators with some organizational guideposts as they work to integrate language development and content area learning.

The third component we offer are the Language Expectations which add specificity to those first two components, and they give educators clear goals for content-driven language learning. The Language Expectations are presented in a format that will be familiar to educators who are used to reviewing and implementing academic content standards, and our hope is that provides collaborators from different disciplines with a common language that they can use to communicate when they're setting unit goals. And then finally the fourth component are the Proficiency Level Descriptors. And those provide continuum of language development for each grade-level cluster and offer goals for how all our students might use language to meet academic content standards. We can go ahead.

The Collaboration Cycle outlined above represents the steps that educators can take in relationship to both the 2020 Edition and the overarching WIDA system to help foster optimal language development and academic achievement for multilingual learners. We envision this as a continuous ongoing cycle beginning with co-reflection, driven by that Can Do Philosophy and Guiding Principles – those help exemplify and explicate principles represented by the four Big Ideas. Part of our goal for today is helping educators identify important questions to consider as they initiate that co-reflective process.

The co-reflection process then can in turn lead to informed and carefully considered co-planning. Then in response to student data gathered from co-teaching of co-planned lessons, we hope that educators will use those new grade-level cluster specific Proficiency Level Descriptors to inform their creation of classroom-based formative assessments – that will help them monitor student progress in and along the continua of language development represented by the Proficiency Level Descriptors. Finally, student data gathered from WIDA assessment can help provide educators with some additional data points to help inform the next cycle of co-reflection, planning, teaching, and assessing as it begins anew. Okay, we’ll move to our final prep slide here.

As I mentioned, since 2004 WIDA’s continued to maintain the same five original Standards Statements but to help remain current with theory, policy, and practice the representations of the Framework have evolved. So the one item that we updated for this Edition in relationship to those Standards Statements are their abbreviations. As you review the diagram on your screen, you’ll see these are abbreviations that say Language for Social and Instructional Purposes, Language for English Language Arts and so on. And with that little word for we’re just trying to indicate a connection to one of the Big Ideas – the functional approach to language within a sociocultural context. We know language is dynamic and that we use language shifts and changes as we move through different environments and engage with different people for different purposes. We want to help educators recognize and emphasize the influence of the social and cultural context in language use, how it fosters language development, and how students use language for thinking and acting in the world.

Finally, I want to briefly touch on what makes Standards 1 unique and important. You can see that it’s represented differently than the others. So that’s where we pull in students’ unique experiences and assets and again work to integrate that sociocultural context across all the ELD Standards. It’s our hope that Standards 1 is going to guide educators to regularly, systematically seek to make connections to and sustain multilingual learners’ assets – their unique cultural and linguistic resources and recognize that is the place where all language learning begins. Students’ individual identities influence their approach to and participation in disciplinary learning, and we feel recognizing that is key to maximizing their academic success. Now I’m going to pass things back over to Lynn to talk a little bit about KLUs before we get into our scenarios.

Lynn Shafer Willner: Awesome. Thank you, Elizabeth. We’re going to look at the second component of the WIDA ELD Standards Framework, the Key Language Uses and therefore – Narrate, Inform, Explain and Argue. As part of developing the 2020 Edition, WIDA researchers analyzed state academic content Standards, research literature and disciplinary practices. And while there’s so much language students are using in school, this analysis found that there were some very prominent uses of language that reoccur across disciplines and across the years of schooling. What the Key Language Uses do is they take this broad idea of all the language of schooling – which is a lot, and then we can say that we notice there are some very high leverage ways to use language when engaging in school. Learning is a social activity, and dialogue serves as the foundation for reflection and action. Key Language Uses are designed to incorporate a theoretical approach called genre families. Key Language Uses are genre families as part of genre-based pedagogy. And that is they are categories of text that share specific characteristics such as purpose, organization, and other similar patterns of language use.

On the screen here I want to show you definitions for the Key Language Uses, and you’ll notice that they’ve been updated from the 2016 Can Do Descriptors. What we found is that Recount needed to have some separation in terms of fiction and nonfiction, so we divided that into two. Now we have Narrate and Inform – then Discuss from the 2016 Edition goes across all the different Standards Statements. Key Language Uses can help you be more strategic in how you prioritize and organize your teaching. And this way, you can get the biggest bang for your buck in a very limited time that you have with students. Let me give you one example to see how this plays out. Let’s take a quick peek at a social studies text.

It has the language use of Explain as most prominent. You’ll see there is some Inform tucked in there with some descriptions. It does have Explain in there, and this text is designed to give an account for how or why things work. You can see a phenomena that's being explained, and you can almost see the arrows connecting the different cause and effect elements within the explanation. There are different events and one event which led to another which led to another. What can you do as a teacher? You can help your students recognize the Key Language Uses with questions. What is the author writing, and what does the text mean? Starting with meaning at the discourse level but then also asking – what does it tell the reader to do? What is its purpose? And you’ll hear the word purpose a lot when you’re thinking about functional language of uses. What is that social purpose? Let me give one little summary statement. Key Language Uses can give us an opportunity to look at language in use – how students use language for learning versus a decontextualized set of language structures over vocabulary. We’re really looking at how language is working and what the language is doing. On that note, we’re going to transition over to our three activities.

We’re going to do some scenarios to help you put this all together thinking about how you would explain this to your colleagues or school leaders and do some practice as we’re reviewing this. We’re setting up the notion preparing you for crucial conversations around this work, and with these conversations there may be – you’re addressing pressing problems or issues. You could have a different point of view, and emotions may be running high. The question is – what common goals might help you move this conversation forward? What we’re going to be doing is moving to our very first discussion. Here’s the first scenario.

And with Mentimeter I’m going to swap it over. Okay, here we go. It has directionality sometimes, but here’s a scenario. When you’re talking with school leaders about equity or other areas of the Big Ideas – how might you use these Big Ideas to inform strategic planning? You’re thinking about – which Big Idea would you like to see infused into your school or organization? Is there a pressing issue that's impacting your students or do you have some type of long-term issue that you'd like to consider? As you’re thinking about this – what are the common goals you might have? And this again is important when you’re setting up this crucial conversation. As we do this, consider your audience. We’re trying to keep this tight, and it’s about forty words. Let's see if we have some possible ideas. How would you go and use this to inform strategic planning? I do apologize for that typo right there.

Responses focus on collaboration and how you can explicitly connect that – grading, sample instruction plans, anchoring it to meet other goals. What are the structures or protocols that can support collaboration between language specialists and content teachers? Equity of opportunity and access – at what rates are they participating in advanced coursework? What's the data that you might use? There may be some administrators that you may want to use the Standards Framework and tie into the student data that you're collecting. Let’s see some other responses – setting the end goal, co-planning, and consistency among disciplines. Sure. I’m a school leader, and we keep equity at the forefront. ELL Essentials are a school-wide professional growth goal, and the Big Ideas can help inform these school-wide goals. Elizabeth, as we’re looking through this – what other patterns might you see in responses that we’re seeing today?

Elizabeth Warren: I see a lot about equity of outcomes and reviewing with an eye towards that which is wonderful. Lots about making sure programs and curriculums and everything is culturally responsive. Ensure that you're following your state plan and district level plan. Let’s see, lots about collaboration and promoting a functional approach – people noting that's going to require some conversations. So much about collaboration and making that happen.

Justine Kolb: There was a nice comment. Sorry, Elizabeth. There was a nice comment that someone talked about – making room for translanguaging. I thought that was a nice one to bring up to the forefront for equity.

Elizabeth Warren: Yeah, absolutely.

Lynn Shafer Willner: We’ll scroll right through, and then we’ll scroll back.

Elizabeth Warren: I see someone emphasizing the potential for these Big Ideas to increase achievement when they’re applied properly.

Lynn Shafer Willner: Right, thinking about – what would you need to support that with evidence? What data might help? I love the idea about the common language.

Elizabeth Warren: Yes, and I think that’s what we’re trying to help people do today too. How do you develop that common language? Where can you start? What are some of the things you can maybe point to specifically within the Framework to help people understand?

Lynn Shafer Willner: I love that multilingualism which has been a shift in this Edition – really thinking about the multiple assets, the multiple goals. Our students are not failed native speakers, but they bring multilingual resources from home. How do you integrate that into core lesson planning? That's great, and I’m going to scroll through and scroll back. Equity is a prominent topic in my district. I would connect the WIDA Framework to our equity initiative.

Elizabeth Warren: I see Justin in the chat noting that they’re working on using the term emergent bilingual in place of English learner. Yeah, moving away from some of those terms that may seem a little more deficit-based or things like that and don't pay proper homage to those assets.

Lynn Shafer Willner: I like this where kids have been classified as English learners for four or more years as long-term English learners. How can you look at what are the assets? What are the materials? What are students doing to engage more deeply when they’re in the general education setting? What kinds of supports? How do we make language more visible and support students where they make that movement up as they're growing up in connection to their own assets?

Elizabeth Warren: I think we’ve received some very rich responses, but maybe in the interest of time we might move to our next scenario. We’re anxious to hear from you on all three of these.

Lynn Shafer Willner: Okay, let’s pull the next one up. I was chatting with Jessica Costa who I believe may be on the call, and she said this had come up for her. Hi, Jessica. She had heard someone say or overheard at the water cooler – using content to teacher language is a waste of time. How would you respond to that? How would you advocate for integrated content and language instruction? What kinds of ideas and scripts would you want to have at the ready? I like this one. I assume I'm going to get this simple response which is not the response I think we always want to use. The simple response I hear some saying – well it’s the law. ESSA requires that states provide English language proficiency standards. English language proficiency standards have to be aligned to content standards in ELA, math, and science.

It’s interesting because this is the relationship that's set up. Language development standards in terms of how WIDA is putting this out – they’re not junior English language arts standards. Each set, each content area has its own specific types of disciplinary literacy. How would you go and say this? I like this. All language has purpose. Nice. If we share that, it's meaningful for kids. Language is not a prerequisite, right? It’s not an … for content learning. How do you make connections and learning to the key concepts that students need to learn? What are the policies concerning the Key Language Uses? Those are for important genre families or the larger categories of language that can support students. Let’s see. Content is the access to make language meaningful, not hypothetical. Application is immediate. I like that. It’s authentic – not hypothetical or abstract. Oh, this is nice. Language is the vehicle, and content is the destination. Some nice metaphors coming out here. There isn’t enough time to teach them separately. Now that’s nice and practical. Great. We can't wait for students to learn English before they learn content. Another really simple, practical way to look at this. Language learning occurs in all aspects of life. I'm just perusing – this is great.

Elizabeth Warren: Yeah, and I like in every content you are teaching language in addition to content. So that's occurring anyway. We want to make that teaching more explicit, visible, and systematic.

Lynn Shafer Willner: This is great. I like this. I like to give examples to unpack the language in content area texts and questions. Content is a vehicle. All students, the argument about all students benefiting. There's a unique specialty that these standards and language specialists can bring to the content classroom. Again, it’s not a junior profession. It’s a profession that has its own areas and specialties to bring and contribute to student development.

Elizabeth Warren: Yes, and we know we don’t want students to have a surface cursory knowledge of things. We want them to be able to deepen and grapple with their understanding and feel confident in positioning their understanding in what they're learning, right? I think helping them add to their linguistic toolkit gives them that confidence.

Lynn Shafer Willner: I see a lot. I love this one about keeping language separate reduces all learners’ opportunity to grow – talking a lot about opportunity, not waiting, the important of integration, and authentic teaching. This is a great one. Ask questions to guide understanding. When have you noticed your multilingual learners being most successful in your classroom? How can we build on that? That’s terrific. And so really connecting to these common goals that you may have. Language is a piece of the identity of the content. Nice. Have an opportunity for guided practice – importance of providing those opportunities to learn. What we'll do is we'll keep collecting these, and we'll collate these. And then we will go and bring them over to you. Let’s do one more, and we’ll just pop this next one in.

Okay, here we go. How might you explain what the Key Language Uses are? What do they offer? Key Language Uses are an important entry way or doorway into the WIDA ELD Standards Framework and into the concept of functional uses of language but are also to some degree esoteric and abstract. How might you explain them to someone who's never heard of them? How do you persuade them that this is an important element to incorporate into their professional practice? Alright, let’s pop this one. Key Language Uses focus us on the specific linguistic moves we make when we narrate, inform, explain, and argue. By identifying them, we can make language functions and features visible and explicit to students – as well as how to use each move to meet lesson demands. Nice. Key Language Uses are guideposts to help us recognize and highlight in our content instruction what it means to do these common, high-leverage tasks with language that we’re asking students to perform across all grade levels and content areas.

They help teachers and students understand the purpose of language. Lovely, purpose. I was once driving in Rochester, New York and they had this huge billboard or huge side of the building I should say. It said – what’s your purpose? I stopped and took a picture. What is our purpose throughout the day? We know language is social, and there’s social language and academic language. How do we integrate those two to go and help kids? How do we empower them and help bring their personal, social, and cultural linguistic resources into academic language? How do we integrate those together? KLUs allow us to express our knowledge, feelings, and opinions. Very concise. Key Language Uses get to the heart of how language functions in the context of content. This is nice. As a teacher, how do I begin prioritizing what language to teach? By naming high-leverage, recurring ways we use language in school, the KLUs can help teams begin organizing development and delivery of curriculum and instruction. It’s a nice way to – they go across Standards, but they also go deep within Standards. It's a nice mechanism to organize what you’ll be doing with your students as you’re planning. They promote higher level thinking skills – explanation and argumentation.

Super key in the middle and high school years but also introduced in the elementary years. And in some of the content standards they're introduced in primary grades. Unit level expectations. So really thinking about the expectations for students and that overarching purpose within a unit. Language expectations tie in there. Nice. Key Language Uses articulate what we do with language and how it’s used across academic core content areas. Elizabeth, any other patterns that you see in this? Any other themes that seem to be coming out?

Elizabeth Warren: Mostly what you’re pointing to that it makes the work of language visible providing those guideposts. I like this. You’re using different angles to land a good punch like a good boxer. You’re zeroing in on the different angles and the way that we adapt our language use based on different demands, scenarios, and audiences.

Lynn Shafer Willner: This is interesting discussing they’re a little different from the Common Core and really looking at getting deeper into how language functions in the service of learning. It's not just a description of text features but really – how are students actively using language for purposes? Students make choices, and they adjust for audience. With the functional approach, we’re really getting into students being active users of language. We have some more. They add another layer of content in doing disciplinary learning. Not just learning the language for science but adding the focus of language for explaining a scientific phenomenon or a social issue. It really adds some depth to that. Great.

Elizabeth Warren: Because when we say language of science that can sound awfully broad, right? So this helps us articulate. What do we mean by language of science? What does that look like?

Lynn Shafer Willner: Yeah. Also looking at developing understanding with a wide variety of discourse types. Key Language Uses are a broad category of genre families, and within them are a range of genres. They do share some common patterns. This is great, but I do want to be careful in terms of time. Justine, were there any other questions?

Justine Kolb: No, there really weren’t. I did want to point out I’ve been going through the chat, and Ruslana at WIDA was one of our writers on the Standards Framework who suggested a book. She mentioned the book by Maria Brisk. It’s a brand-new book to help out and understand genre families and genre theory. It’s called Language in Writing Instruction: Enhancing Literacy in Grades 3-8, and she did put a link there if folks want to go back and check out the book.

Lynn Shafer Willner: That’s a great book. I also added Pauline Gibbons, and she does Scaffolding Language Scaffolding Learning. She’s super practical, and it's a really accessible way if you want to start looking more at a functional approach to language. She does lovely work so also consider Pauline Gibbons – Scaffolding Language Scaffolding Learning. Alright, shall we open it up to questions? One more item before we do that. If you need or want a transcript, I will put this in Mentimeter. You can let us know if you’d like a transcript from today’s discussion and you haven't already submitted your email.

Lynn Shafer Willner: So I'm going to put our slides up. Let’s get back. Elizabeth, how do you want to do this? Should we do the questions? Elizabeth, do you want to come in?

Elizabeth Warren: Yeah, let me do a real quick sweep through reminding everyone of all the resources that we have available so they can go and have some resources for these conversations and things. Then we will open it up for questions. We want to provide a quick reminder of the growing number of resources that are available on the WIDA ELD Standards Framework webpage. You have a nice three-minute Introductory video which is a good way to open conversation with someone who is new to the Framework. There's also a flyer and power point deck that you can use again to introduce the Framework components in things like PLCs, faculty meetings, or one on one conversations with colleagues.

There are the Guiding Principles of Language Development which again both fuel and explicate the Big Ideas that underpin the 2020 Edition. Those are now available in a great illustrated version and are translated into thirteen different languages. We also have some focus bulletins that delve a little more deeply into some of the Big Ideas like collaboration, and I know we have more of those coming as well. We have these Q&A webinar recordings and transcripts. We released a series of FAQs for the 2020 Edition. I mentioned those earlier. We have four already out which include an Introduction, Big Ideas, Key Language Uses and Language Expectations – PLD FAQ coming soon. Finally, we have an At a Glance which is a quick two-page reference guide to the 2020 Edition. We think that in particular might be a nice doc to have on hand for those introductory conversations with folks that are new to the Framework.

We also encourage you to check out the WIDA Professional Learning offerings for your state. You can look at our WIDA map on the public website to check if you are in a state that has opted into the self-paced eWorkshop package. I believe all of our Consortium members with the exception of North Dakota and Pennsylvania do have access to those modules. The WIDA ELD Standards Framework: A Collaborative Approach self-paced eWorkshop was recently released and a facilitated eWorkshop that I know states have opted into, the Planning with the WIDA ELD Standards Framework. We do encourage you to check with your State Department of Education regarding current and upcoming offerings related to the 2020 Edition. Finally, International educators can opt into the WIDA Virtual Institute – self-paced, online, and registration is now open.

If we go ahead and move to the next slide, we'll remind you about ways to stay connected with us on social media. We do have Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. You’re always welcome to visit our website or to email our customer service desk at help@wida.us. If we move to the next slide, a quick reminder that we also have a couple Facebook groups that are very active where you can find other educators that are exchanging ideas or resources and having discussions.

There’s the WIDA Educator Exchange, and then we also have a group specifically for educators that are supporting the success of multilingual learners with disabilities. If you haven't joined either of those groups and you do Facebook, I would encourage you to check them out. Maybe you can find colleagues to collaborate and brainstorm with around the 2020 Edition. Last slide of this nature we want to ask you.

We would really like to better understand your thinking. How are you engaging with the 2020 Edition? What types of resources do you think would be most helpful? Are you interested in giving us additional feedback as we develop new resources? If that is of interest to you and you have five minutes, please fill out that survey. We hope to hear more from all of you. Now we will move into our open question and answer time.

Lynn Shafer Willner: Great. I’ll turn on my video. Elizabeth, would you like to turn it on as well?

Elizabeth Warren: Hi, everybody. Yeah, this is just a time for you all to ask any additional questions you may have – things we can touch upon even if you have some slightly unrelated burning questions. Please let us know or drop a line in the chat.

Justine Kolb: We’re going to give them a little think time. We don't have any questions as of yet.

Elizabeth Warren: I will drop that address in the chat right now. Alright, I did go ahead and drop a link in the chat to the survey. Again, we would love to hear more from all of you and possibly be thinking partners with you a bit as we develop more resources moving forward.

Lynn Shafer Willner: Alright, that was my fourteen-year-old going skiing one of the last days of the season. Thinking about resources, check with your State Education Agency and district. States are doing different roll out plans. Check timing in terms of how it will be rolling out the Standards. WIDA is using a three-to-five-year transition period. It's not like you turn on a dime, and next year everything needs to be in place. There is time to adjust. Key Language Uses are already within the WIDA assessment, but then we’re looking at the normal cycle with item refreshment. As new items are coming up, they’ll be different items that are brought in with the Standards Framework.

Justine Kolb: Lynn, I do have a couple of questions that came in. We have one from David Flores. When analyzing student work, what's the best tool for providing feedback on that specific task engaging student progress on Speaking or Writing? Should they use the WIDA Speaking Writing Rubric or the Performance Level Descriptors?

Lynn Shafer Willner: It’s a great question because right now it speaks to the transition with some overlap. A very nice article in the NJTESOL Journal just came out this month I believe, and there’s a teacher who's using both with a Speaking template. Fernanda, if you have happen to have that it's Maggie Churchill’s article. What she's doing is the Speaking and Writing Rubric – there’s a Speaking Interpretive Rubric and a Writing Interpretive Rubric. And then you can also have the Proficiency Level Descriptors by grade-level cluster. They provide consistent criteria between 2012 and 2020 and some ways to really look at organization of language, cohesion of language, density of language, grammatical complexity, and precision of language. It really brings that much more explicit, developmental set of indicators. David, you’re transitioning between the two thinking about how you might scaffold performance and the levels. I was talking with a teacher, and she considered adding a row – making a name chart and using them to check student’s progress.

Fernanda Kray: Lynn, this is Fernanda. Sorry, you mentioned designing assessments to facilitate oral language development article?

Lynn Shafer Willner: Yes, I think that is the one. It’s in NJTESOL I believe.

Fernanda Kray: Sure, I’ll drop the name in the chat. Thank you.

Lynn Shafer Willner: She provides an approach. It’s three teachers and two colleagues in New Jersey. They’re looking at different ways to set up a task so that you can then use the Speaking Writing Interpretive Rubrics, but also she’s starting to bring in the Proficiency Level Descriptors and other elements within the 2020 Standards Framework.

Justine Kolb: We don’t have any other questions that have appeared. People seem to appreciate your Mentimeters using that to provide input, but we didn’t get a lot of questions this time.

Lynn Shafer Willner: I want to do a shout out to Casey Quick. She’s the teacher I was talking with, and she’s in the chat box. She’s doing some awesome work in Michigan, and we’ve been chatting back and forth looking at – what does it mean as you’re looking at language development in early literacy? There's some really neat work percolating around the country. Nice job to Casey.

Justine Kolb: It looks like Fernanda shared a link.

Fernanda Kray: I’m trying to get the right link. Sorry about that.

Justine Kolb: Okay, everyone ignore that link.

Lynn Shafer Willner: It happens. We’re all online so much, right? And things are sticky.

Justine Kolb: Lynn, someone would like to know when will we get the Mentimeter results? Will that be in the transcript? Will it be sent out if they leave their email with you?

Lynn Shafer Willner: Yeah, it’s super fun. All you have to do is download the results, and then we can put them in the transcripts. I can coordinate with Annemarie on the transcripts for the webinar, and then we can integrate them together. I’m guessing. I would say – this is Tuesday correct? I'd say next week. Annemarie, am I being ambitious or is that okay?

Annemarie Banas: Thanks, Lynn. No, next week is perfect. We should be able to get it. It's just coordinating different logistics to get it up on the website, but yes next week we can get that up there with the transcript. We’ll work on adding all of the Mentimeter results to the transcripts so you've got that as a resource to use.

Justine Kolb: Excellent. Fernanda did get the correct link up for the article mentioned in New Jersey TESOL so check that out too. You'll see it’s the last link that was put in the chat by Fernanda.

Lynn Shafer Willner: Here’s one I’ll add too. We just did for the Washington State educators. We did a comparison, and they’re joining WIDA. Welcome! We just did an article comparing their current standards with the new standards with the WIDA standards. If you look at this first article transitioning – we’ll give you information as you’re looking at key points between the two. So they’re on their website.

Justine Kolb: It really looks like that is all we have for questions which worked out pretty well because our time is 3:55.

Lynn Shafer Willner: Well Justine, thank you. So nice to have you and see you. It's great to get the chance to work with you and different departments at WIDA. It is fun.

Justine Kolb: It is, thank you.

Lynn Shafer Willner: Let’s see. Are there any other questions? Right now, there’s a lot of interesting work being done around the country. Casey and I were talking about this pandemic. In some ways it’s been really rough, but it also gives you a chance to kind of experiment. It was interesting to watch as she's looking at how she would integrate and experiment on this – really a lot of neat stuff going on. What do you think Elizabeth should we call it? We can still stay on if anyone has questions or would like to chat some more.

Elizabeth Warren: Yeah. I don’t mind staying a couple additional minutes in case somebody things of something. Again, thank you to everyone. We so appreciate you joining us and thought partnering with us. We hope you'll continue to reach out and find ways to collaborate with us. We really enjoy the classroom teacher lens, hearing what all of you have to say, and what your plans are.

Lynn Shafer Willner: Look for new articles coming out focused on how teachers are doing collaborative planning or how they’re annotating text. I know there’s at least four to five articles that are in the work that have been submitted. We're trying to do online journals so that you can access them. Keep an eye out for that. A lot should be coming out late this spring and summer. We really appreciate you coming and spending some of your very valuable time with us. We look forward to supporting you, and we look forward to hearing from you how it's going as you’re integrating the new Standards Framework. I said new, but it's really an update because it's consistent with the existing Standard Framework. We're just calling out some of the best of the best that’s always been around.

Justine Kolb: Bye, everyone. Thanks so much for joining us.

Annemarie Banas: Thank you, everybody. I’m going to keep this open just for a little bit longer if people are importing their emails so that they can get a transcript. Yes. I've got all of those copied, and we will get those out next week. Thank you everyone. I'll end the recording here.