Resources/Recursos

This checklist can be used for tracking the accommodations a student receives on WIDA Alternate Screener.

Released July 2025

Use this handout in intake centers or at parent-teacher conferences to help explain what WIDA Alternate Screener is and the process of screening students with the most significant cognitive disabilities and identifying them as English learners. This family handout, available in multiple languages, includes a section for families to take notes and ask questions about English language services.

Released June 2025

This guide helps IEP teams determine if a student should take the WIDA Alternate Screener assessment, or the WIDA Screener (Kindergarten, Online or Paper) assessment with accommodations.

Released June 2025

Use this handout in intake centers or at parent-teacher conferences to help explain what WIDA Screener is and the process of screening students and identifying them as English learners. This family handout, available in multiple languages, includes a section for families to take notes and ask questions about English language services.

Note: This handout replaces the Explaining ELL Status and What Is Language Testing? flyers, which were retired July 1, 2025.

Released June 2025

ACCESS for ELLs Paper technical reports provide evidence for validity and reliability of ACCESS for ELLs Paper and support intended uses, interpretations, and decision made with the test. This is the redacted report for the 2023-2024 administration of ACCESS for ELLs Paper without item information.

NOTE: Both the View and Download Now links will prompt a download of a zip file that contains three files: Part 1: Executive Summary, Purpose, Design, and Implementation; Part 2: Technical Results; Part 3: References.

Released June 2025

ACCESS for ELLs Online technical reports provide evidence for validity and reliability of ACCESS for ELLs Online and support intended uses, interpretations, and decision made with the test. This is the redacted report for the 2023-2024 administration of ACCESS for ELLs Online without item information.

NOTE: Both the View and Download Now links will prompt a download of a zip file that contains three files: Part 1: Executive Summary, Purpose, Design, and Implementation; Part 2: Technical Results; Part 3: References.

Released June 2025

Individual Characteristics Questionnaire (ICQ), which is part of WIDA Alternate ACCESS, captures characteristics of students who take Alternate ACCESS. Test Administrators will fill out the ICQ for each student and that information will be reported on the Individual Student Report. ICQ information can help educator teams make program decisions for students. Prior to administering Alternate ACCESS, download and print this example ICQ and use it to consult with Individual Education Plan (IEP) team members about students. Final responses will be entered on the Student Response Booklet.

Released June 2025

This webinar explored how to use artificial intelligence (AI) effectively to create engaging and standards-based activities for multilingual learners. It focused 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 was designed to be interactive, with opportunities to crowd-source examples for using AI effectively to promote content-based language learning for multilingual students.

Released June 2025

WIDA Alternate ACCESS technical reports provide evidence for validity and reliability of Alternate ACCESS and support intended uses, interpretations and decisions made with the test.

This is the redacted report for the 2023-2024 administration of Alternate ACCESS. Item information is removed from the report.

Released June 2025

This WIDA Snapshot introduces the Marco de referencia de las artes del lenguaje del español de WIDA: Aplicación para la actualización y desarrollo de estándares (Marco ALE). The Marco ALE is a Spanish language arts framework and is designed to support the development of Spanish language arts standards specifically for educational settings in the United States.

Released May 2025

Este resumen informativo de WIDA presenta el Marco de referencia de las artes del lenguaje de español de WIDA: Aplicación para la actualización y desarrollo de estándares (Marco ALE). El Marco ALE es diseñado para apoyar la creación de estándares de las artes del lenguaje del español específicamente para entornos educativos en los Estados Unidos.

Released May 2025

The Tell Us About Your Child Survey is a questionnaire that educators can give to families or caregivers of multilingual learners with the most significant cognitive disabilities to better understand a student's language and communication needs. In the survey, families or caregivers will answer questions about a student’s method of communication and language, their ability to understand communication and their preferred communication supports.

Released May 2025

The Curriculum Amplification Guide and Template supports educators as they work to align their academic curricula to the WIDA English Language Development (ELD) Standards Framework, 2020 Edition. It guides educators through three analysis criteria to examine the strength of alignment and guiding questions to support amplifying the alignment across all units of an academic curriculum.

This template is an extension of the WIDA Focus Bulletin Taking a Genre-Based Approach to Curricular Development Using the Curriculum Amplification Guide. To learn more, we encourage you to read the Focus Bulletin.

Released May 2025

Implementing the WIDA ELD Standards Framework takes time and looks different across different contexts. While some educators are working with different grade-level content curricula, English language specialists may be working with language curricula focusing on a range of proficiency levels. When instructing multilingual learners, it is especially important that curricula strike a balance between content and language. Although it is tempting to start at the lesson level to begin implementation since it feels more manageable to start small, starting at the curricular level is more effective at building a yearlong, cohesive learning experience that builds on current knowledge and experiences and more intentionally towards new understandings and skills. This Focus Bulletin supports educators to take a genre-based approach to making decisions throughout all units of curricula that can both begin and deepen the alignment of the current academic curricula being used to the WIDA ELD Standards Framework.

Released May 2025

Use this scoring scale to score speaking responses for WIDA Screener and the WIDA ACCESS Braille Speaking test only. To score WIDA ACCESS, refer to the WIDA Speaking Scoring Rubric Grades 1–12.

Note: WIDA will publish the brand-new WIDA Speaking Scoring Rubric Grades 1–12 in September 2025.

Released May 2025

Use this scoring scale to score writing responses for WIDA Screener only.

Note: WIDA will publish the brand-new WIDA Writing Scoring Rubric Grades 1–12 in September 2025. This scoring rubric will be used to score WIDA ACCESS Grades 1-12 Writing test responses.

Released May 2025

Use this rubric to score speaking responses on WIDA Screener for Kindergarten and WIDA MODEL for Kindergarten only.

Released May 2025

Use this rubric to score writing responses on WIDA Screener for Kindergarten and WIDA MODEL for Kindergarten only.

Released May 2025

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. We met to discuss how we can build and strengthen systems that promote multilingual newcomers’ success in classrooms across the consortium! During this webinar, we talk about 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.

Released April 2025

Rubrics are analytic scales that describe various aspects of spoken and written language to help educators recognize what speaking and writing sound and look like at various levels of English language proficiency. Use the WIDA MODEL Speaking Rubric to understand the scores students earn on the assessment, analyze student performance in the classroom, and plan ways to scaffold language learning. WIDA MODEL test administrators use the WIDA MODEL Speaking Rubric to score the Speaking domain test for WIDA MODEL Online and WIDA MODEL Paper.

Released April 2025