TeachME Professional Development

1. Newcomers, who are any foreign-born students and their families who have recently arrived in the United States, play an important role in weaving our nation’s social and economic fabric, and U.S. schools play an integral part in helping newcomers adapt and contribute as they integrate into American society.

2. According to the authors, the challenge of integrating into their new home is compounded for newcomers who attend school, since they must not only learn how to function effectively in an education system and with language that typically differs from their prior experience, but also how to:

3. The very presence of immigrant students provides a rich opportunity for all students to expand their cultural knowledge and their capacity to participate fully in a multicultural democracy, and allows for becoming engaged with a world that is increasingly:

4. Newcomers and their families have four basic needs, which include a welcoming environment, high-quality academic programs designed to meet academic and language development needs, encouragement and support to engage in the education process, and:

5. As the newcomer profile vignettes suggest, considerations that school staff should be aware of include:

6. In most cases, the challenge of negotiating, navigating, and becoming part of a school falls equally on the newcomer and the school community.

7. For all newcomers, it is key to be welcomed by school representatives who communicate in a language the students and parents understand and who:

8. Which of the following is NOT one of the primary support areas incorporated into schools with successful newcomer programs?

9. One newcomer program that prioritizes communication is It Takes a Village Academy (ITAVA), where content area teachers are fluent in students’ home language, and where bilingual education is prioritized.

10. Practices to help newcomer students and families include providing extra learning time through after-school, summer school, Saturday school, and/or vacation institutes, determining student and family needs and designing schedules and structures to meet those needs, and optimizing student engagement, learning, and effort through creative scheduling and rigorous coursework.

11. All teachers of newcomers and ELs should have access to high-quality professional learning that provides differentiated instructional strategies, promotes the effective use of student assessment data, develops skills for supporting second-language acquisition across the curriculum, and helps provide and understanding of:

12. When collecting and analyzing student and program data to drive continuous improvement, implementation of extensive summative assessments practices in classrooms is recommended to inform instruction.

13. The Safe and Supportive Schools Model proposes that a positive school environment incorporates appropriate facilities, well-managed classrooms, available school-based health supports, and:

14. In school 1, staff implicitly understand the importance of caregivers as strategic partners in the education of their children, and see it as their responsibility to teach students how to empower their parents in this role.

15. Newcomer policies and practices that focus on an assets orientation encompass each of the following EXCEPT:

16. Newcomers who need to develop English proficiency require instruction that addresses the simultaneous development of English proficiency and:

17. Newcomers bring a wealth of knowledge, experience, and global perspective to their education in U.S. schools, and their cultural backgrounds, linguistic resources, and prior knowledge provide a foundation for new learning.

18. Which of the following is NOT one of the four skills outlined by The Global Competencies Matrix to help all students navigate a world of increasing social, cultural, ethnic, linguistic, and religious diversity?

19. When working with ELLs and newcomers, teachers must initially focus on overcoming students deficits, so that they can move on to future-oriented goals.

20. One key principle that encourages high-quality instruction for all students who need to learn English and meet rigorous, grade-level academic standards is that instruction should leverage ELLs unique approaches to learning and their social-emotional diversity.

21. Both newcomers and ELs may learn concepts in each core subject through simultaneously engaging in subject-specific analytic practices and related language practices, and engagement and expression should evolve as students learn English.

22. In order to construct meaning from texts written or spoken in a new language, newcomers use:

23. Common misconceptions about newcomers include:

24. High-quality educational programs for newcomers should include agreed-upon educational pathways for students that promote coherence across grade levels or school settings.

25. When selecting a topic that promotes global competence, teachers should ensure that the topic encourages deep engagements, embodies local and global significance, and that it invites:

26. Positive emotional well-being correlates with higher rates of academic engagement, a sense of belonging and connectedness in school, and academic motivation, and may reduce conduct problems, drug use, and violence.

27. According to Stavsky (2015) competencies central to social emotional development include perseverance, goal-setting skills, external motivation, and healthy peer and adult relationships.

28. Examples of adult-led informal social emotional supports for newcomers include:

29. To be effective at student-centered discipline, teachers need to use disciplinary strategies that motivate students to want to behave in the classroom, and that:

30. Core stressors for newcomers may include trauma, acculturation challenges, resettlement factors, and isolation.

31. Experts recommend that the most effective way for parents to respond to incidences of discrimination in schools is to immediately address the issues at the district level, as this is the most effective way to protect the victim from repercussions.

32. Since not all newcomer students arrive with their parents, upon enrollment, the school should identify who is responsible for the student and work with families to determine the child’s language proficiency.

33. Which of the following is an accurate statement about the four stages of immigrant parent involvement?

34. Research shows that it can help students thrive when schools and parents establish partnerships that focus on student achievement and school improvement, shared responsibility, trust building, and respectful home-school relationships.

35. Effective newcomer parent engagement programs start with attention to the goals and motivation of parents who send their children to your school.

36. In order to promote continuous improvement in engaging newcomer parents, strategies should be identified so that newcomer families can enrich the school community’s culture by:

37. Parent centers are valuable tools for engaging and supporting newcomer parents and families by offering a welcome environment, serving as a hub for information and communications, and modeling and supporting parents’ engagement with their child’s learning.

38. Strong family engagement programs for newcomers incorporate the “three As” of assembly, assistance, and attention.

39. When organizing family and community engagement around the use of resources, such engagement should include each of the following EXCEPT:

40. Strategies to help newcomer families support academic success include personal outreach by teachers and integration of family engagement into the fabric of teaching and learning.