NEWCOMER TOOL KIT

CHAPTER 4
PROFESSIONAL REFLECTION AND
DISCUSSION ACTIVITY GUIDE
“Support Me”: Creating Social Emotional
Supports for Newcomer Students
(Activity 2—School Self-Assessment and Action Planning)
Purpose
This activity can help teams of teachers and other school staff assess the school’s existing supports for
newcomers’ social emotional development and plan actions to improve the continuum of supports offered to
newcomer students.
Preparation for Activity
• A few days in advance, ask participants to read “Four Types of Support for Newcomers’ Social Emotional
Development” in Chapter 4 of this tool kit.
• Make copies of the activity handout, “Continua for Classifying Types of Supports” (one copy for each
participant).
• On two large poster boards (or flip chart pages), re-create the diagram shown in the activity handout.
• Have magic markers or Sharpies on hand for use during the activity.
Time Required for Activity
1 hour
Instructions for Facilitator
Step One: Self-assessment. Each participant receives a copy of the activity handout—a diagram with four
quadrants: formal adult-led practices, informal adult-led practices, formal student peer-led practices, and informal
student peer-led practices. Explain to participants that the social emotional supports available to newcomers who
attend U.S. schools fit into a variety of categories across practices (formal and informal) and people (adults and
students). Tell them that participants will draw on their reading from Chapter 4 (“Four Types of Support for
Newcomers’ Social Emotional Development”) as they classify supports that are in place at the school to meet all the
social emotional needs of newcomers.
Instruct participants to think of social emotional supports the school provides to students and to record these
practices on the handout in the appropriate quadrant. Next, ask each participant to find a partner and discuss
one another’s ideas, with each partner elaborating on the supports recorded on his or her handout through the
discussion. Then facilitate a whole-group discussion in which participants contribute their findings to create a
single public poster that displays the social emotional supports provided by the school along two axes (“people” and
“planning”).
Step Two: Action Planning. Guide participants as they jointly (1) examine the poster created during the
self-assessment activity, (2) identify areas of strength and areas for needed improvements in the school, and
(3) create a second poster with ideas for new formal or informal supports, and include possible “main providers”
of those supports.
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION • NEWCOMER TOOL KIT • CHAPTER 4 • 23
No official endorsement by the Department of any product, commodity, service, enterprise, curriculum, or program of instruction
mentioned in this publication is intended or should be inferred. For the reader’s convenience, the tool kit contains information about
and from outside organizations, including URLs. Inclusion of such information does not constitute the Department’s endorsement.