WIDA English Learner Standards and School-wide Professional Development

Rhoades Elementary, in the MSD of Wayne Township, Indianapolis, is a Title I building with approximately 25% of our students identified as English learners. With Indiana’s adoption of the College & Career Ready and WIDA ELD* Standards, it became increasingly important to build capacity among the staff to plan instruction that met both content and language objectives. Such dual-focus lessons across the content areas had the potential to increase students’ opportunities for English language development tenfold.

In collaboration with an outside consultant, ENL staff and several classroom teachers planned two workshops which were delivered during regular staff meetings. During these workshops, faculty participated in sheltered instructional strategies which increased their knowledge of the WIDA Standards and the domains of language. While increasing breadth of knowledge across the entire school, we also increased depth of knowledge among grade-level representatives through work with a consultant. The opportunity to expand our staff’s collective knowledge of SHELTERED INSTRUCTION, the DOMAINS of LANGUAGE (thinking, reading, writing, speaking, and listening), and the WIDA LANGUAGES (social/instructional, English language arts, math, science, and social studies) was prompted by Indiana’s adoption of the WIDA ELD Standards.

* WIDA ELD – World-Class Instructional Design and Assessment; English Language Development

Challenges or Obstacles:

• Finding time to conduct the professional development workshops; there are many topics that need to be incorporated during the monthly staff meetings.
• Supporting teachers who were interested in further developing their knowledge and skills as they applied their learning.

Benefits and Successes:

• Achieved multiple goals through the two staff meeting professional development workshops:

1. Increased teachers’ knowledge of SHELTERING STRATEGIES as they learned by doing
2. Increased teachers’ awareness of the WIDA ELD Standards and the DOMAINS of LANGUAGE.
3. Increased teachers’ awareness of the importance that we all serve as teachers of English.

• Integration of language lesson objectives with the content objectives used in the district’s lesson design framework. This led to more seamless planning and implementation of the lesson and reduced the chance that the language objective would be an “add on.”
•  Increased interest among staff in working with the consultant to co-plan and co-teach lessons.

Submitted by: Margaret Boling Mullin, Janet Horton, Emily Polanco, Danielle Rausch, Rhoades Elementary School