Educators at schools throughout the country are asking, “How do I properly address the needs of our Newcomers?” Although there are programs and materials specifically targeting English learners in general, they do not seem to be working well for Newcomers on their own. Therefore, the focus of this webinar is to describe the range of Newcomers (from never schooled to highly schooled in their countries) and how instruction, social-emotional strategies, and structural alignments can address their specific needs.

Through their longitudinal studies and work with hundreds of schools, Margarita Calderón and Shawn Slakk, authors of the book Success with Multicultural Newcomers and English Learners: Proven Practices for School Leadership Teams, have found the best way to teach vocabulary, discourse, basic reading comprehension, and text-based writing integrated with content areas and texts. The authors will share how not only ESL teachers, but also all core content teachers in a school can easily integrate vocabulary, reading comprehension, and writing into every subject. Establishing a whole-school climate for Newcomers and all students entails training all teachers, counselors, coaches, staff and administrators in the school.

A framework for ongoing professional development, coaching, and collegial activities will be presented. The discussion will include

• a planning tool and the flow of strategies throughout a lesson;
• samples of words, phrases, sentence frames to teach before, during and after reading;
• language tools for students;
• starting to read and write from the first day they enter a classroom;
• ways of forming partnerships and teams, and language structures to ensure learning and the development of social and emotional skills; and
• how to assess and keep track of learning progressions.