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Meeting Newcomers at the Door

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Angelica Shornack - shornaa@gcsnc.com

Greensboro - Guilford County Schools

Melissa Nicholson-Clark - mnicholson-clark@chccs.k12.nc.us

Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools

Angelica Shornack

Melissa Nicholson-Clark

#Together4MLs

Network Leaders

2022-2023

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  1. Stop and Jot

What is your role in teaching MLs?

  1. Turn and Talk

My role in teaching MLs is_________.

In addition, my role is to___________.

Getting to Know You

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Guiding Question:

Are all newcomer students the same?

  • SIFE - Students with interrupted formal education
  • Literate in L1
  • Refugee/Asylee
  • Migrant
  • Unaccompanied Minor
  • Culture
  • Background
  • Country/Language

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Newcomer Students in North Carolina Schools

  • Morris Grove Elementary
  • Doris Henderson Newcomers School

A Look at Two Schools in NC

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About Us:

Doris Henderson Newcomer School, Greensboro, NC

  • Newly arrived immigrant and refugee students in grades 3-11 attend Newcomers for up to one year.
  • New students enroll weekly after an orientation meeting with families.
  • Students develop beginning English language skills, attend grade-level courses, and familiarize themselves with the US school environment.
  • All teachers provide linguistic support with differentiated English Language instructional methods to enable students to access grade-level content. Specific classes in English Language Development are provided with intensive language support.
  • I’ve been teaching MLs for 15 years, being 6 years with newcomers. I teach middle school Reading Impact classes. My team consists of 5 core/content teachers (Math, ELA, ELD, Science, and Social Studies)

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Languages Represented in Middle School

Our students transition to:

  • 13-25 elementary schools
  • 4-8 middle schools
  • 13-16 high schools.

We have two transitions dates for students:

Mid-year transition - January

End-of-year transition - June

Most students attend Newcomers for 2 semesters or a single school year.

Most of our middle school students place as Entering Level after they take the W-APT test.

In-House School Supports:

  • Transition Team (Counselor/Social Worker/Administration/Testing Coordinator)
  • Community Liaisons - French, Swahili, Kinyarwanda, Arabic, Spanish, Vietnamese
  • 21 languages represented in middle school

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The Newcomers school social worker also facilitates the School Attendance Team, School Dropout Prevention Team, student and parent conferences, peer mediation, one-on-one small group counseling, student advocacy groups and maintains working relationships with community based resource providers and professionals.

• Center for New North Carolinians (CNNC)

• New Arrivals Institute (NAI)

• Give Kids a Smile (GKAS)

• Department of Public Health

• Westover Church

• UNC-G Psychology Clinic

• Friendly Baptist Church

The 514 initiative

• Crayons Matters

• Out of the Garden Project

Weaver Foundation

• Faith International House

• UNC-G/NC A@T Joint School Social Work program

• Church World Services Greensboro

• African Services Coalition Greensboro

• World Relief High Point

• Backpack Beginnings

• Guilford College Bonner’s program

• Greensboro Salvation Army

• Dormition of the Theotokos Greek Orthodox Church

Community Partnerships

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About Us:

Morris Grove Elementary School

  • Elementary School in Chapel Hill, NC with a population of 425 students.
  • 54 MLs receiving ESL services, 9 exited by 5th grade.
  • We average 7 newcomers a year. Our newcomers are most often here because of a parent's’ job or education. Most newcomers have literacy skills in their L1.
  • I serve newcomers through pull out groups and teacher support.
  • My focus is on creating a welcoming environment for newcomers and improving their oral language skills.

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Guiding Question:

What types of supports do Newcomers/MLs and their families need?

  • Social/emotional
  • Academic
  • Community partnerships

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How We Meet Our Newcomers at the Door

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First Day Friends

  • At the school level, our orientation team sends teachers information about newly enrolled students (grade level, language, country of origin, classroom assignment, transportation), so the classroom teacher will be prepared to receive the students arriving weekly.
  • At the classroom level, students with more English proficiency help new students on their first days. A “buddy” who speaks the same language is assigned to help guide the new student through their schedule, routines, ans tasks in the classroom.

Support for families and student engagement

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Turn and Talk

  • Promote engagement in the classroom using “turn-and-talk” and “stop and jot” time.
  • Use a timer
  • Provide enough time for thinking
  • Model use of linguistic/sentence frames
  • Include visuals
  • Think/share with a partner/share with group

Language Support: speaking/listening/reading/writing

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Who is the main character in the story?

Who are the main characters in the story?

How do you know?

Fiction

The main character in the story is _____________________.

The main characters in the story are_________and________.

1

character

Turn and talk

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Write/draw one word to describe how the character feels in the story?

Fiction

__________________

T

1

Stop and Jot

1

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  • Establish ways to communicate with parents and inform students of upcoming events and celebrations.

  • CLEVER
  • ClassDojo
  • WhattsApp
  • Talkingpoints
  • Language Line

Supports to engage and communicate with families:

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Monday - Pajama Day

Tuesday -

Favorite cap or hat

Wednesday -

Dress up - Picture Day

Thursday -

Favorite Team Jersey

Monday - Follow Your Dreams; Don’t Do Drugs – Wear pajamas

Tuesday - Put a Cap on Drugs – Wear your favorite cap or hat to celebrate a drug free life

Wednesday – (Picture Day) Staying Clean Day – Well dressed and groomed while choosing to be drug free

Thursday - Team up Against Drugs – Wear your favorite team t-shirt or jersey

Friday - Drug Free from Head to Toe – Wear crazy or mismatched socks

Red Ribbon Week - Team Up Against Drugs

Example: communication to inform students of upcoming events at school

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  • Collaborate with your community liaison/interpreters and content teachers to create a brief, but informative classroom/grade level newsletter. Celebrate students’ achievements!

Arabic

Example: Communicating academic goals and events to parents and students providing translated versions.

Spanish

Celebrate students

SEL connection:

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Words to know:

materials

Canvas

Office.com

complete

raise your hand

stay

Visuals to support establishing routines on the first days of school

Students complete a first day passport activity to add key vocabulary words to sentences (cloze activity). They keep the passport with them to revisit it when needed.

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1- Before Guided Reading Classes

  • Homeroom: come in quietly, eat your breakfast, read and write about the SEL presentation/question of the day. Share with a friend, then with class. Throw away trash before the beginning of the lesson.
  • Other classes: Come in quietly and go to your assigned seat.
  • Take out materials needed for class: notebook, pencil, dictionary
  • For computer use: Take out materials needed for class and go to Canvas and Office.com.

Remember:

  • No hats and no gum.
  • Wear appropriate clothes.
  • Use kind words.

hat

gum

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  • Post simple, but detailed directions for daily tasks using links and visuals as much as possible.

Example: support to establish routines in the classroom.

  • daily assignments posted in Canvas

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  • Differentiated assignments

Student

work sample:

Newcomer from Ukraine

Language support for vocabulary and digital literacy skills - listening/writing

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How We Meet Our Newcomers at the Door

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First Day Friends

  • Volunteers who can speak students L1 are recruited from the community, or even high schools, to spend a little time with the newcomer on their first day of school. This helps teach classroom routines, expectations, and eases nerves.

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Affirmations

Routine to support SEL / speaking skills

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Newcomer’s School Book

Support to establish routines, comfort, speaking, listening, reading, and writing skills

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  • We label everyday objects found at school.
  • We talk about what “can” be done outside.
  • We talk about likes/dislikes.

Support for routines

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I use with Newcomers who are at entering stage of English.

This one I use with Newcomers who have developing English skills.

Language supports

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  • CLIMB is our school wide positive behavior matrix.
  • The student write the Korean meaning of each letter.
  • Sentence frames are used to support written language.

Student Examples

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  • We list objects in classroom.
  • If student is able to, we create sentences based on the what is in the classroom.

More examples of student use

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Keva Block Alphabet Book

Support for Language Development in all domains

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  • Using Keva Blocks we divided up the alphabet and each student created a structure for the letter.

  • We then capitalized on each L1 and co-authored a book.

Another Example of Collaborative Work in All Four Language Domains

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Student Work

  • A student built an apple and carton of milk out of Keva blocks.
  • Each author wrote in their L1 what was built for the letter of the alphabet.

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More Examples from our Book

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Evidence of impact as a writer for this student in her “Meet the Author” page.

My goals and dreams: “are to becoming a youtuber and my goal is to say more English and how to draw better.”

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How We Collaborate to Meet Our Newcomers at the Door

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Collaboration is key!

#Together4MLs

Network Leaders

2022-2023

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Strategies to Teach Tier 2 Vocabulary Words to

Multilingual Language Learners

ELD4- Science Mini lesson - pre-teaching vocabulary

Standard:

3.L.1 Understand human body systems and how they are essential for life: protection, movement and support.

3.L.1.1 Compare the different functions of the skeletal and muscular system.

3.L.1.2 Explain why skin is necessary for protection and for the body to remain healthy.

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Bones - Our Skeletal System by Seymour Simon

Bones are strong yet light. Before we are born, our bones are solid. Gradually some become hollow, which makes them very light, but hollow bones are still strong.

As our bodies develop in the womb, our bones are made of soft, flexible material called cartilage. By the time we are born, much of this cartilage has hardened and turned to bone. New bone tissue is constantly being made. Minerals that we get from food make the bones as hard as rock. Strong, stringy material called collagen also runs through most bones and toughens them.

The bones are a storage place for minerals. If certain minerals are needed by other parts of the body, they are released from the bones into the blood. Up until the age of thirty-five, there is more new bone being created than there is old bone breaking down. But by the time we reach old age, a lot of minerals and collagen have disappeared from our bones, which weakens them. These weak bones break more easily, so that elderly people often suffer from broken bones.

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Step 1:

  • light
  • light
  • light

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Step 2:

Definition from dictionary

adjective

adjective: light; comparative adjective: lighter; superlative adjective: lightest

  1. 1.�of little weight; not heavy.�"they are very light and portable"

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Step 3:

Sentence

Bones are strong yet light. Before we are born, our bones are solid. Gradually some become hollow, which makes them very light, but hollow bones are still strong.

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Step 4:

Student-friendly definition

Something not heavy

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Step 5:

Polysemous

The light is too bright!

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Step 5:

Newcomers (phonics):

Onsets and rimes - light, right, night

Part of speech: noun, adjective

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Step 6:

Ping-pong practice:

Newcomers: Balloons are light.

A _____ is light.

A _____ is light.

A _____ is light.

_____ are light.

_____ are light.

  • Provide visuals with examples and nonexamples of light things for newcomers with limited vocabulary.

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Step 7:

Writing

Before we are born our bones are ________, but after that collagen ________ them.

  • hardens
  • flexible
  • light
  • soft
  • toughens

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Writing

A rock is hard, but a __________ is _________.

rock

feather

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Resources:

Professional Development:

Instructional:

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When newcomers come through the door…

Everyone smiles in the same language!

Offer them your best smile.

It means more than you can imagine.

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Q&A:

Angelica Shornack - shornaa@gcsnc.com

Guilford County Schools

Melissa Nicholson-Clark - mnicholson-clark@chccs.k12.nc.us

Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools

Ticket-out-the-door:

1-Take one

2-Leave one