Online Resources for Teachers:
Newcomers
Information
The following materials are intended to help teachers and their students learn more about immigration and newcomers, and to suggest some ways to help their students, including their newcomer students, develop a greater understanding of each other. Information important to newcomer students is also provided.
IMPORTANT NOTE (March 13, 2012): Parliament has now passed Bill C-10, which will introduce some changes to laws affecting youth, such as the Youth Criminal Justice Act (YCJA). The materials on this site are currently being revised to reflect these legislative changes, and the updated versions will be posted as they are completed. In the meantime, please note that some of these documents will have outdated information. To see a summary of the changes to the YCJA, please refer to this page on the Parliament of Canada website.
PLEASE NOTE: All documents are in PDF format except where otherwise indicated. To view them, you will need the Adobe Acrobat Reader, available for free at this link. To save the document to your computer, right-click on the link and choose “Save Target As…” or “Save link as…”.
Lessons
Class Activities
Intended For: Teachers, Secondary Grade Level
This document contains suggestions for a number of class activities based around the topic of newcomers. The objective is for students to learn more about newcomers, including culture and world view, and for newcomer students to become more integrated with their fellow students while upholding the value of their culture of origin. A research activity about what the law says about immigration and youth is also included. The document is mainly intended as a teacher’s guide, but can be distributed to students as a reference for their activities.
Questions and Answers
Intended For: Secondary Grade Level
This document contains a series of questions and answers aimed at newcomer students. Topics include: culture conflict, parents and stress, parent control and discipline, police and the law, loneliness, succeeding in school, climate and weather, and fears. Students who are not newcomers may find the information useful in helping them understand the lives of their fellow students who are newcomers.
This document is published under a Creative Commons licence, so teachers may feel free to adapt it for their newcomer students, including making translations. If you are interested in having this document translated into a specific language, please contact us.
Links
The following links are to external resources that teachers may find useful for lesson plan source material, student exploration and expansion of personal knowledge on this topic. Please contact us to report any broken links.
Bullying and Harassment
An academic article with statistics on newcomer youth, published by the Joint Centre of Excellence for Research on Immigration and Settlement (CERIS)
ImmigrantChildren.ca
A blog dedicated to information about immigrant children and youth.
Settlement.org
An Ontario-based professional development website for those working with newcomers. A useful resource for teachers or anyone who works with newcomers. The link above is to a page with information and resources related to newcomer youth.
Alberta Immigration
Information for immigrants coming to or living in Alberta.
Edmonton Mennonite Centre for Newcomers
An Edmonton-based agency that provides services and information for newcomers.
Citizenship and Immigration Canada
The Government of Canada’s website for the ministry responsible for newcomers.
Welcome to Canada: What You Should Know
A guide for newcomers, including newcomer youth, published by the Government of Canada. The document is also available in PDF format.
Changing Together – A Centre for Immigrant Women
Offers free help to immigrant women and their families. Based in Edmonton.