A core component of the Bridges model is culturally responsive instruction. Learners are recognized for the strengths and expertise they bring to the learning space. Bridges teachers deeply know and honor their students by affirming students’ culture, language, and ethnic and racial backgrounds. The foundation of the Bridges classroom is a culture that allows students to bring their full selves into the classroom through home language connections and culturally responsive thematic units of study.

Home Language Connections: Home language supports include resources to help students make connections to their home language and further develop their literacy and language skills in their home language. An example of intentional home language support is found in the design of the classroom environments, which display translated language in labels and anchor charts. Classroom Environments Support Home Language Students use their home language as a cognitive tool for learning by annotating and naming words in their home language, accessing dictionaries and translation apps, and reading texts in their home language. Students are strategically partnered with other students who speak the same home language, and students have access to staff who speak their home language.

Thematic Language Arts Units: Students engage in thematic units of study centered around culturally responsive themes and ideas. Thematic units include topics such as power, identity, resources, and immigration rights. Students engage in these units of study to answer essential questions such as:

• Who am I? What makes us who we are?
• Which aspects of our identity do we share with others?
• What else contributes to our identity? How are we similar and different? 
• What are our roots? 
• What is power and how do people use it?
• How do people make the world a better place?

Social-emotional learning is a cornerstone of the Bridges model. Students learn best and take risks when they feel a sense of belonging and safety. Social-emotional learning is facilitated by teachers cultivating a safe and welcoming environment, integrating social-emotional learning into academic content, and explicitly teaching social-emotional skills. Teachers integrate social-emotional learning into academic learning, facilitating students’ development of social-emotional skills and applying those skills in the context of the classroom and academic work. 

Safe and Welcoming Environment: Students engage in consistent routines and organization systems that allow them to access the support they need, including language materials and other students in the classroom, through the classroom setup and opportunities to engage with peers. Students take on meaningful jobs and roles to share responsibility for the classroom culture and environment. Teachers create a welcoming environment by modeling respectful, interested, and kind interactions. Students have space to share about their own cultural backgrounds and to learn about others’ cultural backgrounds. 

Integration of Social Skills in Academic Learning: Students engage in flexible small groups to support their academic learning and relationship building. Students collaborate and support each other’s language and content development in small groups and centers. Students develop communication skills and oral language development through discussion with their peers. Students develop self-management and self-awareness skills in conjunction with their academic learning as they self-reflect on their progress and learning.

Social-Emotional Skill Lessons: Learners develop social-emotional skills aligned to the CASEL framework through explicit lessons focused on self-management, social awareness, and relationship building. CASEL framework

Across multiple contents, the Bridges programs teach foundational skills so that learners can develop the literacy and numeracy skills needed to access grade-level content. Learners are assessed in their home language to precisely determine their content skills and language needs. 

Students practice and build foundational skills through small groups and centers. In math, students engage in centers-based learning to develop skills in basic numeracy, fractions, decimals, and ratios and proportions. Math Centers-Based Learning During the foundational literacy skills class, centers are focused on decoding on-level texts, independent reading, writing, and foundational reading skills. Literacy Centers Within Spanish home language classes, learners engage in whole-group and small-group instruction focused on foundational reading and writing skills.

Integration of language and content development is a core component of the Bridges model. In both literacy and math classrooms, teachers facilitate integrated learning through intentional language scaffolds, gradual release instruction, and explicit vocabulary work. Students make meaning of texts and build their language skills and content knowledge through strategies such as Read-Retell-Respond and the Language Experience Approach. 

Gradual Release Instruction: Students experience a gradual release of responsibility model to support their learning of content and language. In lessons, the teacher uses familiar vocabulary to model the new content learning and highlights the relevant new language. Students then engage with their peers to socialize understanding of the task or strategy. With teacher and peer support, students practice concepts and language by using new language and sharing the meaning of keywords. As the learning continues, students engage in partner or group work focused on the content-based task and academic vocabulary. Students provide support to themselves, access resources in the classroom (visuals, sentence starters), and engage in feedback conversations with the teacher. After the collaborative learning time, students engage independently in the task by applying learnings from the lesson, independently leveraging classroom resources, and, when needed, leveraging the support and feedback from peers and teachers. Gradual Release for Language and Literacy Development In addition to content-focused lessons, students engage in the gradual release framework during lessons focused on explicitly teaching English language skills such as syntax. Teaching English Syntax in an Integrated Unit

Introducing and Interacting with Vocabulary: Introducing content and academic vocabulary is a key component of the integrated language and literacy approach. Students learn new vocabulary by first exploring images and identifying words in their home language. The teacher connects the images to the essential questions and explicitly teaches English vocabulary with visuals and comprehensible definitions. Students then translate the new vocabulary words in their home language glossary using peer and teacher support as needed. Students engage in the collaborative practice of new vocabulary with flashcards and tasks to categorize the words. Students then practice writing and orally reading the new vocabulary words by writing their own sentences connecting the vocabulary words to their lived experiences in their home countries. Teachers facilitate vocabulary development in both ENL/ELA and math classrooms. Introducing and Interacting with Vocabulary

Read-Retell-Respond: An important strategy used in Bridges classrooms is supporting students in making meaning of a text through the Read-Retell-Respond protocol. In Read-Retell-Respond, students engage in a metacognitive process of interacting with text to build literal comprehension and academic content knowledge. The teacher first sets the purpose of reading and facilitates students to activate their schema on the topic through lived experience and past learning. Students interact with the text by annotating images and text as a scaffold for independent reading. After reading independently, students retell through partner retell in their home language and whole class retell activities, including dramatic reads and sharing understanding through concept maps. Students then respond to the text by sharing their own insights and sense-making. Read-Retell-Respond The Read-Retell-Respond strategy is used both in ENL/ELA classrooms and has been adapted to support students in making sense of word problems in math. 

Language Experience Approach: One of the key strategies for language and content development is the Language Experience Approach (LEA), which is designed to support students to consolidate content understanding and to represent their oral language as print. The Language Experience Approach begins with a shared experience such as an experiment, field trip, video, or text to help students understand the content. Students then engage with the focus question and English vocabulary through visual anchors and leveraging their home language. Students begin to make connections to the concepts, language, and print through informal conversations to express ideas and communicate their experiences. The core component of LEA is when the teacher transcribes students’ oral language into written language to describe their experience of the content in academic vocabulary. With teacher facilitation, the students actively engage with their transcribed text through activities designed to build fluency, content-specific language, and make meaning of the content. Students gain content knowledge, language skills, foundational literacy skills, and metacognitive awareness about language. Language Experience Approach