Souderton ESL team unveils four-unit newcomer curriculum; committee to vote at action meeting

Souderton Area School District ESL staff presented a new, district-wide English language development curriculum for newcomer students and described identification procedures, classroom models and supports on May 14 at the district’s EP committee meeting.

The presentation, led by Christine Main, the elementary ESL coordinator, Carly Lambert, an elementary ESL teacher at West Broad Street, and Kim Musselman, high-school ESL teacher and secondary ESL coordinator, detailed four thematic newcomer units — community, family, routines and weather — designed to be nonsequential and usable across grade bands from first through 12th grade.

The curriculum is intended for “newcomers,” defined in the district as students who have been in the United States roughly six months to a year. Staff said the district screens newly registered students with a home language survey; any response listing another language prompts a consultation and a screening assessment to gauge English proficiency. The district administers the WIDA assessment each year, typically in January–February, and uses proficiency levels 1–6 to guide placement and exit from ESL supports.

“We have about over 20 languages, spoken here in the district,” Christine Main said, underscoring the program’s linguistic diversity. Main added the units were written after a four-day curriculum-writing course at the Montgomery County Intermediate Unit and refined within the district to include project-based learning tasks and transferable goals to content classes such as math, science and social studies.

Lambert described the units as a “resource bank” teachers can pick from rather than a strict sequence: “Something that's great about these units that we have created is that they are not sequential,” she said. Each unit includes learning events and a project-based activity (for example, writing a children’s book about a family holiday) that teachers can adapt by grade band and student proficiency.

At the high school level, Musselman said ESL supports include structured ESL 1–3 classes, a co-teaching model, regular collaborations with content teachers during the school’s “Red Zone” period, and ESL teaching assistants who help bridge classroom instruction and family communication. She also described a Schoology group, Supporting Multilingual Learners, that holds curriculum resources, translation tools and graphic organizers for content teachers.

Board members and committee attendees pressed for details about program scale and staffing. Committee members were told the district has about 357 English learners — roughly 6% of the student population — and that figures fluctuate (the department reported past peaks above 400). On staffing, presenters said the district employs about 15 ESL teachers and approximately 11 teaching assistants, with roughly 25–30% of those staff speaking additional languages.

Committee members praised the program’s community partnerships, including a literacy project run with the Indian Valley Education Foundation and Souderton Mennonite Home, and the presentation the ESL team gave at the Montgomery County Intermediate Unit workshop.

The EP committee concluded the item by agreeing to advance the curriculum for a formal vote: committee members signaled support to move the curriculum to the next action committee for approval.

Committee discussion also covered program logistics — screening steps, newcomer definition, WIDA timing, and how the newcomer curriculum dovetails with ongoing ELD supports — and emphasized the program’s focus on both English proficiency and content access.

The district’s ESL team said they will continue monthly departmental meetings, county-level ELD council participation and local ELD work group activity aimed at expanding collaborative supports and developing versions of the newcomer units for different proficiency levels.

The EP committee did not adopt the curriculum on May 14; members agreed to take the item to an action meeting for a formal vote.