Closing the gap in newcomer education
The Bridges-CUNY Newcomer Program is a nationally available pilot that holistically addresses the needs of SLIFE and newcomers through targeted assessment tools, culturally responsive curricula, and training in implementation and school-wide systems of collaboration for teachers and administrators.
Program Components
The ELA/ELD year-long curriculum consists of three thematic units that reflect ELA core content with foundational language and literacy support in reading, writing, listening, and speaking. Materials are designed to meet the needs of multilingual students, and integrate social-emotional learning and culturally-responsive content. The curriculum is aligned to ELA CCSS, WIDA, and ELP standards with English Language Development (ELD) scaffolds.
The Foundational Math Unit of Study is designed to accelerate numeracy development for SLIFE who come to the U.S. with gaps in their math education. It is composed of 30 lessons, a pre- and post-assessment and a performance task, aligned to Math NGLS and CCLS standards. It supports students in building community, to acclimate them to U.S. classrooms, and reflects Math core content with foundational academic language and numeracy support in reading, writing, representing numbers, and operations.
The ELA/ELD Teacher Professional Learning consists of 4 modules during the school year for a large cohort of teachers across districts. Office hours are aligned to each module to provide additional support. Leadership consultations with school and district leaders further support successful programming.
To read more about each session, visit here.
Our research team assesses the program impact by measuring improvements in writing scores for newcomer ELs, oral language skills, numeracy and basic operations skills for students in the math classroom, confidence of students in the classroom, development of transferable skills in other academic classes, and social-emotional skills, specifically in collaboration and independence.