The ACCESS for ELLs secure, large-scale English language proficiency assessment has been designed by the World-Class Instructional Design and Assessment (WIDA) Consortium.

English language proficiency scores were reported for each grade level for each of the following three language domains and the composite as determined by WIDA:

Think for a moment about how children learn language. They are learning before they are even born. They can hear and feel the vibrations of their mother’s voice while they are still in the womb. Once welcomed into the world, they listen to their parents talking and singing to them. Like little sponges, they soak everything in, from the sounds letters and words make to the inflection and rhythm of the spoken language. Then they begin making sounds of their own.

Through oral language, or spoken language, children progress in their understanding of words and the ability to use them to communicate their thoughts and feelings with others. They start by saying simple words usually around the age of one, soon followed by stringing words together to form sentences.

What is shared reading?

Girls and boys enter our early elementary classrooms eager to engage with books and to become readers themselves. When implemented effectively as part of a balanced approach to literacy, Shared Reading is an extremely powerful instructional strategy that can help our students to achieve that critical goal!

Publishers of ESL curricula have long touted the size of their comparative vocabulary lists, implying “bigger is better”. To bolster the perception of program quality, the goal becomes “how many words can we teach?”. But there’s little connection between size of vocabulary lists and fluency in the language.

Consider this: a student can learn thousands of English words and still be unable to verbally express a complete thought!

ake a look at this image. What is this a picture of? What colors did the artist use and why? What is the artist trying to accomplish?

This is a beautiful, brightly-colored chameleon, isn’t it? Take another look. Do you notice the feet on top of the head and in the tail? Do you see the faces near the eye and on the underside of the tail? This amazing work of art by Johannes Stötter is, in fact, two people painted to look like a chameleon.