Writing is a critical dimension of literacy that is grounded in language and intimately connected to reading. However, instruction to support writing remains understudied, particularly among bilingual students. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of the CLAVES intervention specifically on argument writing. The CLAVES intervention…

Translanguaging pedagogy is gaining widespread recognition as an approach that recognizes and builds on multilingual students' linguistic resources. Research on translanguaging pedagogy has predominantly focused on classroom language practices, while studies on the design and enactment of translanguaged instruction are limited. This pilot study…

Students are expected to comprehend and produce increasingly complex texts in upper elementary school, and academic language and literacy skills are considered critical to meeting these expectations. Notions of academic language are also controversial and require careful deliberation when applied to traditionally minoritized populations, including…

The adoption of the Common Core in many states across the country means we need to explore instructional approaches that promote student language use in order to meet many of the complex linguistic standards that comprise the Common Core. In this Teaching Tip, we provide a blueprint for a 4-week collaborative discussion mini-unit that a second…

This article documents a collaboration between a second-grade teacher and a university-based literacy coach to implement dialogic instruction as part of a 14-week cross-disciplinary curriculum unit. The coach-teacher dyad used digital technologies to enhance a problem-solving approach to coaching. The authors describe the coaching interactions,…

The primary aim of this study was to explore the relationship between teachers' instruction and students' vocabulary and comprehension in grades 3-5. The secondary aim of this study was to investigate whether this relationship differed for English monolingual and Spanish-English bilingual students. To meet these aims, we observed and…

Given the increase of bilingual students in the K-12 public school system, understanding reading comprehension performance, especially among this population, has been a major focal point in the research literature. This study explores the nature of reading comprehension among a sample of 123 Spanish-English bilingual elementary students. We add to…

This quasi-experimental study investigated the effects of an Internet-delivered universally designed depth of vocabulary intervention that targeted both English-speaking and Spanish-English-speaking students. Two hundred forty students, 49% of whom were Spanish-English bilinguals, participated in the 16-week intervention. Intervention students…

This study examined the relative contribution of reading comprehension strategies and interactive vocabulary in Improving Comprehension Online (ICON), a universally designed web-based scaffolded text environment designed to improve fifth-grade monolingual English and bilingual students' reading achievement. Seventy-five monolingual English and 31…

This study was designed to investigate the effect of English reading comprehension on cognate knowledge among a sample of Spanish-speaking bilinguals alongside their monolingual English-speaking counterparts. In order to understand this developmental relationship, the effects of English reading comprehension were controlled in regression analyses,…

The sheer quantity of words known (breadth) is strongly predictive of reading comprehension, yet little is understood about how quality of word knowledge (depth) affects comprehension. A group of 35 bilingual and monolingual 5th-grade students worked on developing depth of knowledge of 8 words, culminating in an activity in which the students…

This article describes a series of studies that examine the development of literacy in elementary school Spanish-speaking second-language learners. Findings from the research that addresses our first question-regarding cross-language relationships-indicate that first-language reading skills are related to second-language reading skills, but that…