WIDA Can-Do Classroom Template–Freebie!

As any teacher who works with ELLs knows it is incredibly important to know your students’ proficiency levels.  Most states require ELL students to take the ACCESS English proficiency test each year to determine proficiency levels.


SIDE NOTE: I can’t wait to get our scores back and see how my kiddos did!


WIDA is the place to visit to learn more about language proficiency and the different language domains: listening, speaking, reading and writing.  They even provide an amazing resource to help the teacher figure out what the scores mean in terms of day-t0-day performance and abilities.  That resource is the Can-Do descriptors.  They break down a level 2 speaking level really means a child can do.
What I’ve found is that the Can-Do descriptors are helpful, but I needed a resource where I could see all of the kids together…flipping between a bunch of Can-Do sheets wasn’t practical, just looking at an Excel sheet with the scores wasn’t either.


So, at the suggestion of a good friend I put together a template that allows the teacher to see all their ELL students scores in each domain and proficiency level on ONE page – with a brief synopsis of each Can-Do descriptor…it’s hard to imagine, take a look: (I don’t know why but the table doesn’t show all the grid lines, they’re there, but don’t show up in the image)

You can see that students do not gain language proficiency the same way.  Some students are excellent readers in English but struggle with writing.  Others are good listeners but struggle with speaking, etc..


Often times we have higher expectations of a very articulate ELL, but just because they’ve mastered English speaking more quickly than the other language domains, does not mean that we can have the same proficiency expectations in the other domains…

This template helps the teacher keep it all straight.  I wanted to share this resource to help all other bilingual teachers – or even the regular education teachers who have several ELLs in their class.  You can download it on my TpT store by clicking the image below.

It’s a Word Document so you can easily edit it and make it look fancier – I wanted to make the template as generic as possible.  I hope this helps you keep all those proficiency levels straight and helps you meet your students’ needs a bit more easily. 


Let me know what you think!
Mrs. Castro