6B WIDA Standards

Overall, I thought that the document was well organized and seemed easy to use.  There were such specific, easy to implement ideas.   I found the levels 1-6 helpful because sometimes it is hard to know how much a student is capable of doing in a new language.  I find this especially difficult with shy students. I appreciated the first standard, Social and Instructional Language; Formative framework, because that is how the students learn to function in the class.  From studying and teaching in other cultures, I have learned how different classroom expectation can be in a way that is just understood.  A list with such specific activities reminds me to teach instructional language too.  I also loved all the specific ideas about how to differentiate activities for students at the different levels of language acquisition.  A lot of the ideas would work for native speakers too.  In that way, it seems that these ideas would work well in many classrooms. 

I looked at the standards for teaching grades 3-5 (thinking of a 5th grade classroom) and again loved all the detailed ideas.  The chart helps me organize how to tailor the lesson to the specific needs of students and helps me think of other similar strategies for different topics.  I thought the point of view exercises were excellent and liked how they started with the point of view of the student.  After reading any genre, the students could participate in those activities.  Although the level one and two students have lower English language skills, I would still like them to connect to the text in some way.  That concept seems missing in the first two levels and is important to understanding the literary concept of point of view.  Perhaps the student could describe a character with words or actions or pictures or talk about the character in his or her native language, even if I did not understand.  I keep thinking about how ELLs need to learn content too.