How Do Newcomer Programs Address Students Language Learning and Academic Needs?
The programs offer a range of instructional activities for students that reflect the goal of developing both language and academic skills so that students may enter the regular ESL or bilingual program, or in some cases, mainstream classes. Ninety-eight percent of the programs provide a course in English as a second language. Eighty percent offer sheltered content instruction, and 73% offer content instruction in at least one of the students’ native languages. (Over 10 different languages are used for content area instruction.) Forty percent have courses in native language literacy. More than half of the programs offer both sheltered instruction and native language content instruction. In some of these sites, bilingual courses may be available for one or two high-incidence language groups, while sheltered instruction is offered to low-incidence language groups. Because a large number of the students have limited educational backgrounds, many of the content classes are designed to help
