Guidelines

Both the content of the lessons, and their organisation and your teaching methods can have an impact on students. Conditions should be favourable so that immigrant students participate actively in class.

1. Keep the pedagogy visible: make your expectancies explicit, present clear objectives, use explicit language, point out the purpose of the activities, make links between activities and learning (making a difference between “do” and “learn”).
2. Build a school and class culture the immigrant student may be proud to belong to.
3. Give priority to basic learning (that also needs to be explicit).
4. Stimulate immigrant students’ assertiveness, communication skills, self-knowledge and knowledge of others, acting on social rules and ability to manage conflict situations if your students are at risk of dropout.
5. Favour group work as this strategy promotes the ability of being able to relate to others and may enable students to develop skills among peers.
6. Plan for classroom diversity through several materials and pedagogic tools.
7. Articulate classroom activities with non-formal activities carried out outside the classroom by social mediators and psychologists.
8. Review and analyse difficult moments (situations) with colleagues.