This report summarizes Austin Independent School District's spring 2015 English language learners' early reading performance in kindergarten through grade 2.

This classroom-based case study examines how Spanish-English emergent bilingual children in a second grade one-way immersion classroom draw on prior knowledge and experiences and use comprehension strategies to discuss and comprehend three texts with different levels of cultural relevance. Through an examination of the rich range of cognitive,…

This study sought to expand the evidence base for the effectiveness of Spanish literacy interventions by examining the effectiveness of Leamos para Avanzar: Un programa de lectura para niños (Let's Read to Advance: A reading program for children; LPA). Participants included three students (2 females, 1 male) who (a) were classified as English…

This study investigated early indicators of Spanish-speaking English learners (ELs) at risk for reading difficulties at the end of Grade 2 by examining their early bilingual oral language development, taking into account language of academic instruction. Standardized measures of reading and narrative samples were collected in English and Spanish…

Dialogic teaching represents an orientation toward classroom dialogue that surfaces student ideas, allows students to encounter and dialogue with each other's ideas, and privileges divergent understandings. This orientation shows considerable pedagogical promise. Yet, particularly in schools serving economically marginalized and/or linguistically…

The strength of English learners' second language reading is closely associated with academic success. Using qualitative research methods and verbal protocols, this study examines four elementary-level English learners' uses of reading strategies and describes how each English learner employs these strategies while reading both culturally relevant…

In this longitudinal study, the cross-language transfer from second language (L2) to first language (L1) was examined among Spanish-speaking English-language learners in an English intervention (Grades 1-3) in the southwest United States. Path analysis revealed statistically significant transfers (ps < 0.05) for the treatment group from English…

Purpose: We examined the relationship between maternal level of education as an index of socioeconomic status (SES) on the narrative story retells of school-aged children who are English language learners (ELLs) to guide interpretation of results. Method: Using data available from the Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts database (Miller…

In order to read fluently, children have to form orthographic representations. Despite numerous investigations, there is no clear answer to the question of the number of times they need to read a word to form an orthographic representation. We used length effect on reading times as a measure, because there are large differences between long and…

The purpose of this dissertation is to contextualize the measurement of the HLE for Spanish-speaking Latino families. This goal will be accomplished by using a series of HLE items to characterize the potential heterogeneity in the HLE of Spanish-speaking families as well as to examine differences in the HLE based on caregiver's language…

This study investigated relations among microlevel and macrolevel domains of oral narrative retells within and across the languages of Spanish-speaking bilingual children. Fifty-six first and second graders (M[subscript age] = 7 years, 3 months) were assessed on a retell task in Spanish and English. Two statistical analyses were conducted: (a)…

This study investigated how performance on reading curriculum-based measurement (R-CBM) in Spanish is related to performance on R-CBM in English. Parallel process growth models and quantile regression analyses were used to examine the relations between initial benchmark scores and growth and the consistency of the relations across student reading…

As a result of a university partnership, elementary students at two midwest Catholic elementary schools have been provided with exploratory world language instruction (FLEX) from pre-service teachers. To investigate students' attitudes and learning of Spanish, researchers interviewed second and fourth graders. The students' parents and pre-service…

Previous studies about ELs have reported data on active English Learners--defined as those students who have not yet reached proficiency on a state English test--at a specific moment in time. This study, for the first time, analyzed the long-term trajectories of 18,000 CPS students who began kindergarten as ELs and followed their progress all the…

These maps provide an overview of existing dual language programs in the district for the 2012-2013 school year and the distribution of Spanish-speaking English language learners.