Does your district integrate English language learners who are recent immigrants?

The below is a great article discussing some best practices for adolescent ELL’s. The focus is on challenges facing schools with recent immigrant student populations. The below is an EXCERPT from the article titled: Best Practices for Adolescent ELLs.
Best Practices for Adolescent ELLs
Judith Rance-Roney
http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/apr09/vol66/num07/Best-Practices-for-Adolescent-ELLs.aspx
Recent immigrants may face even more challenges than other English language learners as they attempt to adjust to a new country and culture. One approach to easing that adjustment is the newcomer school, which may be a school within a school (Olsen, 1997) or, like New York City's award-winning International High School, a stand-alone school enrolling only recent immigrants. These schools provide immigrant students with intensive English-language instruction, content-area support in their native languages, and culturally responsive student and social services.
However, school districts may not have sufficient numbers of immigrants or enough community support to maintain this model. And some researchers express concern about extended linguistic segregation because of the lack of interaction with U.S.-born peers, potentially lower standards for academic achievement and opportunity, and lack of access to social networks that will serve these learners in the future (Gándara, Rumberger, Maxwell-Jolly, & Callahan, 2003).

A promising classroom structure sometimes called the ELL cluster model has emerged in some schools to integrate some of the benefits of newcomer programs while avoiding linguistic segregation from native-English-speaking peers (Rance-Roney, 2008). A special cohort of content-area teachers is trained in methods for teaching the English language and in theories of second-language acquisition. Within these globally focused classrooms, one-quarter to one-third of the students are English language learners and the remaining students are native English speakers.

This classroom model uses elements of the sheltered instruction approach for ELLs, a class structure wherein content mastery and academic language skill are developed concurrently. Although the class is conducted in English, classroom aides who speak the ELLs' native languages may assist. The teacher creates an environment that legitimizes the students' appropriate use of the native language to support the learning of academic content. Native English speakers in cluster classrooms benefit from the diverse perspectives their multilingual students bring to class discussion.

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Read Best Practices for Adolescent ELLs on ASCD.org.