Demystifying WIDA ACCESS: A Guide to Rules, Regulations, and Resources

WIDA ACCESS testing takes place every year for students currently receiving ESL services. Read below for key facts, dates, and rules about testing administration, as well as some resources that may help you prepare your ELLs!

TESTING DATES 2022-2023

For the 2023-2024 school year, the testing window is February 5, 2023 through March 29, 2023.

TEST ADMINISTRATOR CERTIFICATION

As an ESL teacher, every year you'll need to recertify as a testing administrator for the ACCESS test. You can do this online in the Secure Portal. you will complete the training that is appropriate to the type of test you are administering (WIDA ACCESS online, Alternate ACCESS, or Kindergarten ACCESS.

Do not confuse the Secure Portal with the Assessment Management System (AMS). You only use AMS for setting up the tests, administering, and getting score reports. All of your training will be in the Secure Portal.

The Test Administrator training is a series of quizzes (last year it was through Canvas).

TEST FORMAT (WIDA ACCESS for ELLs online)

The format of the regular ACCESS online test is pretty simple. There are four sections: reading, listening, speaking, and writing. When you deliver the test, WIDA recommends that Day 1 is reading and listening because these are receptive skills and are slightly easier than productive skills. Day 2 should be speaking and writing (students must produce rather than receive the language). The test involves multiple choice, writing, and speaking types of responses.

*Students will absolutely need wired headphones with a microphone attached. They must have this for the listening and speaking sections. Some instructions are also read aloud to students in the reading and writing sections as well. Students must have wired headphones (no AirPods!).

You do not need to do any scoring for the online ACCESS test. All scoring is centrally done by WIDA. This is both good and bad. Good in the sense that it's no extra work for you the teacher. Bad in the sense that I (and many other ESL teachers) have sometimes found WIDA's scoring to be way off the mark (both too low and too high). You can request a score review, but it's a complicated process. You need to explain to your students that YOU are NOT scoring their work. For this reason, they need to be very clear and detailed when they speak and write, as the test scorer does not know them/their accent/their way of explaining things.

The Alternate WIDA ACCESS and the Kindergarten paper version are a bit different. I will discuss those in a separate post.

SPEAKING AND LISTENING--IMPORTANT NOTE

For the Speaking and Listening sections, there are a few things that you need to practice with your students before the test day. For listening, students will only hear a recording once. This means that they need to be ready to listen actively. They should read any questions and/or look at any accompanying pictures BEFORE clicking the audio button to hear the recording.

For the speaking section, students only have a few seconds to begin speaking. This means that if they click record and then choke and get nervous and don't speak, the recorder will time out and mark them as "No Response." This means that students need to first THINK about what they will say before they click the record button. They also need to speak clearly and with a decent volume. You don't want your kids to lose points over a bad recording quality. I highly recommend that you practice using FlipGrid many times before the day of the test, as speaking is what makes ELLs the most nervous.

WIDA ACCESS TEST PREP RESOURCES

Check out the resources below to help you prepare your ESL students for test day.