Because immigrant students are usually well behaved in class, teachers are not always aware that they are bored and are not learning. Good classes for immigrant students not only provide them with access to important ideas and skills, but also engage them in their own constructive development of understandings. Complex and flexible forms of collaboration maximize learners' opportunities to interact while making sense of language and content. Collaborative work needs to provide every student with substantial and equitable opportunities to participate in open exchange and elaborated discussions. In these collaborative groups, the teacher is no longer the authority figure.
Students work autonomously, taking responsibility for their own learning.
The teacher provides a task that invites and requires each student's participation and hands over to the students the responsibility for accomplishing the task or solving the problem. Students are given multiple opportunities to extend their understandings and apply their knowledge. One of the goals of learning is to be able to apply acquired knowledge to novel situations. For English learners, these applications reinforce the development of new language, concepts, and academic skills as students actively draw connections between pieces of knowledge and their contexts. Authentic assessment is an integral part of teaching and learning.