The aim of this paper is to present an in-service teacher education year-long programme in a primary public school district in a middle town in Northern-Eastern Italy.The school district is enrolling an increasing number of immigrant children from different countries, in different periods of the year, with little or no competence in Italian as a second language. According to the school organization, the immigrant children are assigned to their class on the same-age basis, rather than on the basis of their competence in Italian; therefore, teachers need to develop models and strategies to facilitate the immigrant children's participation in classroom activities.21 teachers participated in the programme, which is aimed at increasing their practice by promoting sustained discussions on the scaffolding strategies they enact in classrooms, and reflections on the alternatives.Theoretical framework:The Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (Daniels, 2001; Engeström, 1991) is used to structure the program and to analyse the research data. The cultural-historical activity theory has a three-fold usefulness:-it provides a conceptual frame for the multidimensional nature of human learning;-it recognizes classrooms as microsystems of cultural mediation;-it offers the teachers new useful alternatives on the scaffolding strategies to foster immigrant children's participation in school activities.According to this theory, children's learning can be viewed as an increasing participation in a specialized discourse, producing a dynamic balance between intended meaning and communicative acts (Sfard, 2000). Moreover, learning involves the transformation of the same classroom activities in terms of changing artifacts and rules of interaction.Classroom ethnography (Carspecken, 1996; Delamont, 2002) and discourse analysis (Gee, 1999; Wells, 1999) are considered as relevant devices to develop teachers' sensitivity to the contextual factors that shape each child's learning path.Teacher education can be seen as the development of a "community of practice": teachers are professionals that strategically shape their curriculum plans according to their everyday contexts, and that could improve their instructional models and strategies through the participation in a community of practice (Lave and Wenger, 1991). The concept of "community of practice" can characterize professional teachers working together on instructional issues as a joint enterprise (specifically, the issues connected to the legitimate and increasing participation of immigrant children in the classroom activities).The programme structure:The Programme objective is the development of a community of professional practice in which teachers:-may discuss and reflect on their conceptual models of learning and immigrant children's school integration;-may develop strategies to scaffold immigrant children's learning;-may produce materials and knowledge as school reference.The programme is organized on three levels:-Plenary lessons, in which instructional models are discussed;-Classroom ethnographies, focused on specific classroom interactional dynamics;-discussion laboratories, in which teachers and researchers critically examine recorded observational data regarding actual interactions.By analysing different classroom episodes, teachers can highlight the scaffolding strategies they enact in practice to sustain mutual understanding and immigrant children's participation in school activities, recognize their often implicit professional models, and take a chance to reflect on alternatives to make their educational goals more effective.The research objectives:The discussions among teachers and researchers about the protocols of classroom interactions are analysed to understand constraints and changes in the community of practice; more specifically, questions are addressed about:-how the ethnographic protocols are used as tools for developing critical reflections about classroom practice;- what models have been developed by techers about the role of immigrant children's experiences and cultural resources in their classrooms;-the kinds of alternative scaffolding strategies that are developed;-the reorganization of classroom practices.