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IES PRACTICE GUIDE
Effective Literacy and
English Language Instruction
for English Learners
in the Elementary Grades
IES PRACTICE GUIDE
Effective Literacy and
English Language Instruction
for English Learners
in the Elementary Grades
NCEE 2007-4011
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
NCEE 2007-4011
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
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The Institute of Education Sciences (IES) publishes practice guides in education
to bring the best available evidence and expertise to bear on the types o systemic
challenges that cannot currently be addressed by single interventions or programs.
Authors o practice guides seldom conduct the types o systematic literature searches
that are the backbone o a meta-analysis, though they take advantage o such work
when it is already published. Instead, they use their expertise to identiy the most
important research with respect to their recommendations, augmented by a searcho recent publications to assure that the research citations are up-to-date.
One unique eature o IES-sponsored practice guides is that they are subjected to
rigorous external peer review through the same oce that is responsible or inde-
pendent review o other IES publications. A critical task o the peer reviewers o a
practice guide is to determine whether the evidence cited in support o particular
recommendations is up-to-date and that studies o similar or better quality that
point in a dierent direction have not been ignored. Because practice guides depend
on the expertise o their authors and their group decisionmaking, the content o a
practice guide is not and should not be viewed as a set o recommendations that in
every case depends on and ows inevitably rom scientifc research.
The goal o this Practice Guide is to ormulate specifc and coherent evidence-based
recommendations or use by educators addressing a multiaceted challenge that
lacks developed or evaluated packaged approaches. The challenge is eective lit-
eracy instruction or English learners in the elementary grades. The Guide provides
practical and coherent inormation on critical topics related to literacy instruction
or English learners.
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IES PRACTICE GUIDE
Eective Literacy and
English Language Instruction
for English Learners
in the Elementary Grades
Russell Gersten (Chair)RG RESEARCH GROUPAND UNIVERSITYOF OREGON
Scott K. Baker
PACIFIC INSTITUTESFOR RESEARCHAND UNIVERSITYOF OREGON
Timothy Shanahan
UNIVERSITYOF ILLINOISAT CHICAGO
Sylvia Linan-Thompson
THE UNIVERSITYOF TEXASAT AUSTIN
Penny Collins
Robin Scarcella
UNIVERSITYOF CALIFORNIAAT IRVINE
NCEE 2007-4011
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
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This report was prepared or the National Center or Education Evaluation and Re-
gional Assistance, Institute o Education Sciences under Contract ED-02-CO-0022
by the What Works Clearinghouse, a project o a joint venture o the American In-
stitutes or Research and The Campbell Collaboration, and Contract ED-05-CO-0026
by Optimal Solutions Group, LLC.
Disclaimer
The opinions and positions expressed in this practice guide are the authors and do
not necessarily represent the opinions and positions o the Institute o Education
Sciences or the United States Department o Education. This practice guide should
be reviewed and applied according to the specifc needs o the educators and edu-
cation agency using it and with ull realization that it represents only one approach
that might be taken, based on the research that was available at the time o pub-
lication. This practice guide should be used as a tool to assist in decision-making
rather than as a cookbook. Any reerences within the document to specifc educa-
tion products are illustrative and do not imply endorsement o these products to
the exclusion o other products that are not reerenced.
U.S. Department of Education
Margaret Spellings
Secretary
Institute of Education Sciences
Grover J. Whitehurst
Director
National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance
Phoebe CottinghamCommissioner
July 2007
This report is in the public domain. While permission to reprint this publication is
not necessary, the citation should be:
Gersten, R., Baker, S.K., Shanahan, T., Linan-Thompson, S., Collins, P., & Scarcella,
R. (2007). Eective Literacy and English Language Instruction or English Learners in
the Elementary Grades: A Practice Guide (NCEE 2007-4011). Washington, DC: National
Center or Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, Institute o Education Sci-ences, U.S. Department o Education. Retrieved rom http://ies.ed.gov/ncee.
This report is available on the IES web site at http://ies.ed.gov/ncee
Alternate Formats
On request, this publication can be made available in alternate ormats, such as
Braille, large print, audio tape, or computer diskette. For more inormation, call the
Alternate Format Center at (202) 205-8113.
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iii
Contents
Foreword rom the Institte o Edcation Sciences iv
Preace rom the athors vi
Aot the athors ix
Disclosre o potential conicts o interest xi
Oeriew 1
Checklist or carrying ot the recommendations 2
Recommendation 1. Screen or reading prolems and monitor progress 5
Recommendation 2. Proide intensie small-grop reading interentions 10
Recommendation 3. Proide extensie and aried ocalary instrction 13
Recommendation 4. Deelop academic English 16
Recommendation 5. Schedle reglar peer-assisted learning opportnities 20
Appendix 1. Technical inormation on the stdies 22
Recommendation 1. Screen or reading prolems and monitor progress 22
Recommendation 2. Proide intensie small-grop reading interentions 23
Recommendation 3. Proide extensie and aried ocalary instrction 24
Recommendation 4. Deelop academic English 26
Recommendation 5. Schedle reglar peer-assisted learning opportnities 27
Appendix 2. Leels o eidence or the recommendations in the practice gide 29
Notes 31
Reerences 34
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iv
Foreword from
the Institute of
Education Sciences
What is a practice guide? The health careproessions have embraced a mechanism
or assembling and communicating evi-
dence-based advice to practitioners about
care or specic clinical conditions. Vari-
ously called practice guidelines, treatment
protocols, critical pathways, best practice
guides, or simply practice guides, these
documents are systematically developed
recommendations about the course o care
or requently encountered problems, rang-
ing rom physical conditions such as ootulcers to psychosocial conditions such as
adolescent development.1
Practice guides are similar to the products
o expert consensus panels in reecting the
views o those serving on the panel and
the social decisions that come into play as
the positions o individual panel members
are orged into statements that all are will-
ing to endorse. However, practice guides
are generated under three constraints thattypically do not apply to consensus panels.
The rst is that a practice guide consists o
a list o discrete recommendations that are
intended to be actionable. The second is
that those recommendations taken together
are intended to be a coherentapproach to
a multiaceted problem. The third, which
is most important, is that each recommen-
dation is explicitly connected to the level
of evidence supporting it, with the level
represented by a grade (or example, high,moderate, or low).
The levels o evidence, or grades, are usually
constructed around the value o particular
types o studies or drawing causal conclu-
sions about what works. Thus, one typically
nds that the top level o evidence is drawn
rom a body o randomized controlled trials,
the middle level rom well designed studies
that do not involve randomization, and the
bottom level rom the opinions o respected
authorities. Levels o evidence can also be
constructed around the value o particular
types o studies or other goals, such as the
reliability and validity o assessments.
Practice guides can also be distinguished
rom systematic reviews or meta-analyses,
which use statistical methods to summarize
the results o studies obtained rom a rule-
based search o the literature. Authors o
practice guides seldom conduct the types
o systematic literature searches that are
the backbone o a meta-analysis, though
they take advantage o such work when it
is already published. Instead, they use theirexpertise to identiy the most important re-
search with respect to their recommenda-
tions, augmented by a search o recent pub-
lications to assure that the research citations
are up-to-date. Further, the characterization
o the quality and direction o the evidence
underlying a recommendation in a practice
guide relies less on a tight set o rules and
statistical algorithms and more on the judg-
ment o the authors than would be the case
in a high-quality meta-analysis. Anotherdistinction is that a practice guide, because
it aims or a comprehensive and coherent
approach, operates with more numerous
and more contextualized statements o what
works than does a typical meta-analysis.
Thus, practice guides sit somewhere be-
tween consensus reports and meta-analyses
in the degree to which systematic processes
are used or locating relevant research and
characterizing its meaning. Practice guidesare more like consensus panel reports than
meta-analyses in the breadth and com-
plexity o the topics they address. Practice
guides are diferent rom both consensus
reports and meta-analyses in providing
advice at the level o specic action steps
along a pathway that represents a more or
less coherent and comprehensive approach
to a multiaceted problem.
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FOREwORD
The Institute o Education Sciences (IES)
publishes practice guides in education to
bring the best available evidence and exper-
tise to bear on the types o systemic chal-
lenges that cannot currently be addressed
by single interventions or programs. Al-though IES has taken advantage o the his-
tory o practice guides in health care to pro-
vide models o how to proceed in education,
education is dierent rom health care in
ways that may require that practice guides
in education have somewhat dierent de-
signs. Even within health care, where prac-
tice guides now number in the thousands,
there is no single template in use. Rather,
one fnds descriptions o general design
eatures that permit substantial variationin the realization o practice guides across
subspecialties and panels o experts.2 Ac-
cordingly, the templates or IES practice
guides may vary across practice guides and
change over time and with experience.
The steps involved in producing an IES-
sponsored practice guide are, frst, to se-
lect a topic, inormed by ormal surveys o
practitioners and requests. Next is to recruit
a panel chair who has a national reputa-tion and up-to-date expertise in the topic.
Third, the chair, working with IES, selects a
small number o panelists to coauthor the
practice guide. These are people the chair
believes can work well together and have
the requisite expertise to be a convincing
source o recommendations. IES recom-
mends that at one least one o the panelists
be a practitioner with experience relevant to
the topic being addressed. The chair and the
panelists are provided a general templateor a practice guide along the lines o the in-
ormation provided here. The practice guide
panel works under a short deadline o six to
nine months to produce a drat document.
It interacts with and receives eedback rom
sta at IES during the development o the
practice guide, but its members understand
that they are the authors and thus respon-
sible or the fnal product.
One unique eature o IES-sponsored prac-
tice guides is that they are subjected to
rigorous external peer review through the
same oce that is responsible or inde-
pendent review o other IES publications.
A critical task o the peer reviewers o apractice guide is to determine whether
the evidence cited in support o particular
recommendations is up-to-date and that
studies o similar or better quality that
point in a dierent direction have not been
ignored. Peer reviewers also are asked to
evaluate whether the evidence grades as-
signed to particular recommendations by
the practice guide authors are appropriate.
A practice guide is revised as necessary to
meet the concerns o external peer reviewsand gain the approval o the standards
and review sta at IES. The external peer
review is carried out independent o the
oce and sta within IES that instigated
the practice guide.
Because practice guides depend on the
expertise o their authors and their group
decisionmaking, the content o a practice
guide is not and should not be viewed as a
set o recommendations that in every casedepends on and ows inevitably rom sci-
entifc research. It is not only possible but
also likely that two teams o recognized
experts working independently to produce
a practice guide on the same topic would
generate products that dier in important
respects. Thus, consumers o practice
guides need to understand that they are,
in eect, getting the advice o consultants.
These consultants should, on average, pro-
vide substantially better advice than anindividual school district might obtain on
its own because the authors are national
authorities who have to achieve consensus
among themselves, justiy their recom-
mendations with supporting evidence, and
undergo rigorous independent peer review
o their product.
Institute o Education Sciences
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i
Preace romthe authors
The goal o this Practice Guide is to ormu-
late specifc and coherent evidence-basedrecommendations or use by educators
addressing a multiaceted challenge that
lacks developed or evaluated packaged
approaches. The challenge is eective lit-
eracy instruction or English learners in
the elementary grades. At one level, the
target audience is a broad spectrum o
school practitionersadministrators, cur-
riculum specialists, coaches, sta develop-
ment specialists, and teachers. At another
level, a more specifc objective is to reachdistrict-level administrators with a Practice
Guide that will help them develop practice
and policy options or their schools. The
Guide includes specifc recommendations
or district administrators and indicates
the quality o the evidence that supports
these recommendations.
Our expectation is that a superintendent
or curriculum director could use this Prac-
tice Guide to help make decisions aboutpolicy involving literacy instruction or
English learners in the elementary grades.
For example, we include recommendations
on curriculum selection, sensible assess-
ments or monitoring progress, and rea-
sonable expectations or student achieve-
ment and growth. The Guide provides
practical and coherent inormation on
critical topics related to literacy instruc-
tion or English learners.
We, the authors, are a small group with
expertise on various dimensions o this
topic. Several o us are also experts in
research methodology. The range o evi-
dence we considered in developing this
document is vast, ranging rom expert
analyses o curricula and programs, to
case studies o seemingly eective class-
rooms and schools, to trends in the
National Assessment o Educational Prog-
ress data, to correlational studies and
longitudinal studies o patterns o typical
development. For questions about what
works best, high-quality experimental and
quasi-experimental studies, such as thosemeeting the criteria o the What Works
Clearinghouse, have a privileged position
(www.whatworks.ed.gov). In all cases we
pay particular attention to patterns o fnd-
ings that are replicated across studies.
Although we draw on evidence about the
eectiveness o speciic programs and
practices, we use this inormation to make
broader points about improving practice.
In this document we have tried to take afnding rom research or a practice recom-
mended by experts and describe how the
use o this practice or recommendation
might actually unold in school settings.
In other words we aim to provide sucient
detail so that a curriculum director would
have a clear sense o the steps necessary
to make use o the recommendation.
A unique eature o practice guides is
the explicit and clear delineation o thequalityas well as quantityo evidence
that supports each claim. To do this, we
adapted a semistructured hierarchy sug-
gested by the Institute o Education Sci-
ences. This classiication system uses
both the quality and quantity o available
evidence to help determine the strength
o the evidence base in which each rec-
ommended practice is grounded. (This
system appears in appendix 2.)
Strongreers to consistent and generaliz-
able evidence that an approach or prac-
tice causes better outcomes or English
learners or that an assessment is reli-
able and valid. Moderate reers either to
evidence rom studies that allow strong
causal conclusions but cannot be gener-
alized with assurance to the population
on which a recommendation is ocused
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PREFACE ii
(perhaps because the fndings have not
been suciently replicated) or to evidence
rom studies that are generalizable but
have more causal ambiguity than oered
by experimental designs (such as statisti-
cal models o correlational data or groupcomparison designs where equivalence
o the groups at pretest is uncertain). For
the assessments, moderate reers to high-
quality studies rom a small number o
samples that are not representative o the
whole population. Lowreers to expert
opinion based on reasonable extrapola-
tions rom research and theory on other
topics and evidence rom studies that do
not meet the standards or moderate or
strong evidence.
In this English Learner Practice Guide we
use eect sizes or describing the magni-
tude o impact o a program or practice
reported in a study. This metric is increas-
ingly used in social science research to
provide a gauge o the magnitude o the
improvement in perormance reported in a
research study. A common index o eect
size is the mean dierence between the
experimental and comparison conditionsexpressed in standard deviation units. In
accordance with the What Works Clearing-
house criteria we describe an eect size o
+0.25 or higher as substantively important.
This is equivalent to raising perormance
o a group o students at least 10 percen-
tile points on a valid test.
For each recommendation we include an
appendix that provides more technical in-
ormation about the studies and our deci-sions regarding level o evidence or the
recommendation. To illustrate the types o
studies reviewed we describe one study in
considerable detail or each recommenda-
tion. Our goal in doing this is to provide
interested readers with more detail about
the research designs, the intervention
components, and how impact was mea-
sured. By including a particular study, we
do not mean to suggest that it is the best
study reviewed or the recommendation
or necessarily an exemplary study in any
way.
We have not addressed two main areas.
First, we did not address English learners
in middle school and high school. Schools
ace very dierent issues in designing in-
struction or students who enter school
when they are young (and oten have re-
ceived no education or minimal instruc-
tion in another language or educational
system) and those who enter in grades 6
to 12 and oten are making a transition to
another language and another educationalsystem. For that reason we chose to ocus
on only one o these populations, students
in the elementary grades.
Second, we did not address the language
o instruction. Our goal is to provide guid-
ance or all English learners, whether
they are taught to read in their home lan-
guage, in English (by ar the most preva-
lent method in the United States), or in
both languages simultaneously. The rec-ommendations are relevant or students
regardless o their language o reading
instruction. The best language to use or
initial reading instruction has been the
subject o great debate and numerous re-
views o the literature.
Some experts conclude that students are
best served by having some reading in-
struction in their native language,3 others
that students should be taught to read si-multaneously in both English and their na-
tive language,4 still others that the results
are inconclusive.5 Many reviews have cited
serious methodological laws in all the
studies in terms o internal validity;6 oth-
ers have not addressed the quality o the
research design.7 Currently, schools op-
erate under an array o divergent policies
set by the state and local school district.
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iii PREFACE
In most cases school administrators have
little say on issues involving language o
initial reading instruction, so we do not
take a position on this intricate issue or
this Practice Guide.
We would like to thank the ollowing in-
dividuals or their helpul eedback and
reviews o earlier versions o this Guide:
Catherine Snow and Nonie Lesaux o Har-
vard University; Maria Elena Arguelles, in-
dependent consultant; Margaret McKeown
o University o Pittsburgh; Michael Coyne
o University o Connecticut; Benjamin S.
Clarke o University o Oregon and Jeanie
Smith o Pacifc Institutes or Research;
and Lana Edwards Santoro and Rebecca
Newman-Gonchar o RG Research Group.
We also wish to acknowledge the excep-
tional contribution o Elyse Hunt-Heinzen,
our research assistant on the project, and
we thank Charlene Gatewood o OptimalSolutions and the anonymous reviewers
or their contributions to the refnement
o this report.
Dr. Russell GerstenDr. Scott Baker
Dr. Timothy ShanahanDr. Sylvia Linan-Thompson
Dr. Penny CollinsDr. Robin Scarcella
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ix
About the authors
Dr. Russell Gersten is executive director o
Instructional Research Group, a nonproft
educational research institute, as well as
proessor emeritus in the College o Edu-cation at the University o Oregon. He
currently serves as principal investigator
or the What Works Clearinghouseon the
topic o instructional research on English
language learners. He is currently princi-
pal investigator o two large Institute o
Education Sciences projects involving ran-
domized trials in the areas o Reading First
proessional development and reading
comprehension research. His main areas
o expertise are instructional research onEnglish learners, mathematics instruc-
tion, reading comprehension research,
and evaluation methodology. In 2002 Dr.
Gersten received the Distinguished Spe-
cial Education Researcher Award rom
the American Educational Research As-
sociations Special Education Research
Division. Dr. Gersten has more than 150
publications in scientifc journals, such as
Review o Educational Research, American
Educational Research Journal,Reading Re-search Quarterly, Educational Leadership,
and Exceptional Children.
Dr. Scott Baker is the director o Pacifc In-
stitutes or Research in Eugene, Oregon. He
specializes in early literacy measurement
and instruction in reading and mathemat-
ics. Dr. Baker is co-principal investigator on
two grants unded by the Institute o Edu-
cation Sciences, and he is the codirector
o the Oregon Reading First Center. Dr.Bakers scholarly contributions include
conceptual, qualitative, and quantitative
publications on a range o topics related to
students at risk or school diculties and
students who are English learners.
Dr. Timothy Shanahan is proessor o
urban education at the University o Illi-
nois at Chicago (UIC) and director o the
UIC Center or Literacy. He was president o
the International Reading Association until
May 2007. He was executive director o the
Chicago Reading Initiative, a public school
improvement project serving 437,000 chil-
dren, in 200102. He received the Albert J.Harris Award or outstanding research on
reading disability rom the International
Reading Association. Dr. Shanahan served
on the White House Assembly on Reading
and the National Reading Panel, a group
convened by the National Institute o Child
Health and Human Development at the
request o Congress to evaluate research
on successul methods o teaching read-
ing. He has written or edited six books,
including Multidisciplinary Perspectives onLiteracy, and more than 100 articles and
research studies. Dr. Shanahans research
ocuses on the relationship o reading and
writing, school improvement, the assess-
ment o reading ability, and amily literacy.
He chaired the National Literacy Panel on
Language-Minority Children and Youth
and the National Early Literacy Panel.
Dr. Sylvia Linan-Thompson is an associ-
ate proessor, Fellow in the Mollie V. DavisProessorship in Learning Disabilities at
The University o Texas at Austin, and
director o the Vaughn Gross Center or
Reading and Language Arts. She is associ-
ate director o the National Research and
Development Center on English Language
Learners, which is examining the eect o
instructional practices that enhance vo-
cabulary and comprehension or middle
school English learners in content areas.
She has developed and examined readinginterventions or struggling readers who
are monolingual English speakers, English
learners, and bilingual students acquiring
Spanish literacy.
Dr. Penny Collins (ormerly Chiappe) is
an assistant proessor in the Department
o Education at the University o Calior-
nia, Irvine. Her research examines the
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x AbOuT ThE AuThORS
development o reading skills or children
rom linguistically diverse backgrounds
and the early identifcation o children at
risk or reading diculties. She is involved
in projects on eective instructional inter-
ventions to promote academic success orEnglish learners in elementary, middle,
and secondary schools. Dr. Collins is on
the editorial boards oJournal o Learn-
ing DisabilitiesandEducational Psychology.
Her work has appeared in Applied Psycho-
linguistics,Journal o Educational Psychol-
ogy,Journal o Experimental Child Psychol-
ogy, and Scientifc Studies o Reading.
Dr. Robin Scarcella is a proessor in the
School o Humanities at the University
o Caliornia, Irvine, where she also di-
rects the Program o Academic English/
ESL. She has taught English as a second
language in Caliornias elementary andsecondary schools and colleges. She has
written many research articles, appear-
ing in such journals as The TESOL Quar-
terlyand Studies in Second Language Ac-
quisition, as well as in books. Her most
recent volume, Accelerating Academic
English, was published by the University
o Caliornia.
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xi
Disclosure o potentialconficts o interest
Practice guide panels are composed o in-
dividuals who are nationally recognizedexperts on the topics about which they are
rendering recommendations. IES expects
that such experts will be involved proes-
sionally in a variety o matters that relate
to their work as a panel. Panel members
are asked to disclose their proessional
involvements and to institute deliberative
processes that encourage critical examina-
tion the views o panel members as they
relate to the content o the practice guide.
The potential inuence o panel membersproessional engagements is urther muted
by the requirement that they ground their
recommendations in evidence that is docu-
mented in the practice guide. In addition,
the practice guide is subjected to indepen-
dent external peer review prior to publica-
tion, with particular ocus on whether the
evidence related to the recommendations
in the practice guide has been has been
appropriately presented.
The proessional engagements reported
by each panel members that appear most
closely associated with the panel recom-
mendations are noted below.
Dr. Gersten, the panel chair, is a co-author
o a orthcoming Houghton Milin K-6
reading series that includes material re-
lated to English learners. The reading
series is not reerenced in the practice
guide.
Dr. Baker has an author agreement with
Cambium Learning to produce an instruc-
tional module or English learners. Thismodule is not written and is not reerenced
in the practice guide.
Dr. Linan-Thompson was one o the pri-
mary researchers on intervention studies
that used Proactive Reading curriculum,
and she developed the ESL adaptations
or the intervention. Linan-Thompson co-
authored the research reports that are de-
scribed in the Guide.
Dr. Shanahan receives royalties on vari-
ous curricula designed or elementary and
middle school reading instruction, includ-
ing Harcourt Achieve Elements o Reading
Fluency (Grades 1-3); Macmillan McGraw-Hill
Treasures (Grades K-6); and AGS Glove-Pear-
son AMP (Grades 6-8). None o these prod-
ucts, though widely used, are aimed spe-
cifcally at the English learner instructional
market (the ocus o this practice guide).
Macmillan publishes a separate programaimed at the English learner population.
Shanahan is not involved in that program.
Dr. Scarcella provides on-going teacher
proessional development services on aca-
demic vocabulary through the University
o Caliornia Proessional Development
Institutes that are authorized by the Cali-
ornia State Board o Education.
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1
Overview
The National Assessment o Educational
Progress (NAEP) has tracked the achieve-
ment o Hispanic students since 1975. Al-
though many English learners are in theHispanic designation, English learners as
a group have only recently been disaggre-
gated in the NAEP analyses. Recent analy-
sis o long-term trends8 reveals that the
achievement gap between Hispanics and
Whites in reading has been signifcantly
reduced over the past 30 years or 9-year-
olds and 17-year-olds (although not or
13-year-olds).9
Despite apparent progress in the ear-lier grades, major problems persist. For
instance, the 2005 achievement gap o
35 points in reading between ourth-
grade English learners and non-English
learners was greater than the Black-White
achievement gap.10 And the body o sci-
entifc research on eective instructional
strategies is limited or teaching English
learners.11
There have been some signifcant recentadvances. O particular note is the in-
crease in rigorous instructional research
with English learners. Districts and states
have increasingly assessed progress o
English learners in academic areas and in
English language development. Several ex-
amples in the literature illustrate success
stories among English learnersboth or
individual students and or schools. These
students, despite having to learn English
while mastering a typical school curricu-lum, have beaten the odds in academic
achievement.12
How can we increase the chances that
more English learners will achieve these
successes? To answer, we must turn frst
to research. Unortunately, there has not
been sucient research aimed at under-
standing how to improve the quality o
literacy instruction or English learners.
Only about a dozen studies reach the level
o rigor necessary to determine that spe-
cifc instructional practices or programsdo, in act, produce signifcantly better
academic outcomes with English learners.
This work has been analyzed and reviewed
by the What Works Clearinghouse(the
work o the Clearinghouseis integrated
into our text when relevant; new studies
will be added periodically).
Despite the paucity o rigorous experimen-
tal research, we believe that the available
evidence allows us to provide practicalrecommendations about aspects o in-
struction on which research has cast the
sharpest light. This researchsuggestsas
opposed to demonstratesthe practices
most likely to improve learning or Eng-
lish learners.
Over the years many terms have been used
to reer to children who enter school using
a language other than English: limited Eng-
lish profciency (LEP), English as a secondlanguage (ESL), English or speakers o
other languages (ESOL), second language
learners, language minority students,
and so on. In this Practice Guide we use
English learners because we eel it is the
most descriptive and accurate term or the
largest number o children. This term says
nothing about childrens language prof-
ciency or how many other languages they
may useit simply recognizes that they
are learning English.
This Practice Guide provides fve recom-
mendations, integrated into a coherent
and comprehensive approachor improv-ing the reading achievement and English
language development o English learners
in the elementary grades.
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2 OvERvIEw
Recommendations
Conduct ormative assessments with1.
English learners using English lan-
guage measures o phonological pro-
cessing, letter knowledge, and wordand text reading. Use these data to
identiy English learners who require
additional instructional support and
to monitor their reading progress over
time (Level of Evidence: Strong).
Provide ocused, intensive small-group2.
interventions or English learners de-
termined to be at risk or reading prob-
lems. Although the amount o time in
small-group instruction and the inten-sity o this instruction should reect
the degree o risk, determined by read-
ing assessment data and other indica-
tors, the interventions should include
the fve core reading elements (phono-
logical awareness, phonics, reading u-
ency, vocabulary, and comprehension).
Explicit, direct instruction should be
the primary means o instructional de-
livery (Level of Evidence: Strong).
Provide high-quality vocabulary in-3.
struction throughout the day. Teach
essential content words in depth. In
addition, use instructional time to ad-
dress the meanings o common words,
phrases, and expressions not yet
learned (Level of Evidence: Strong).
Ensure that the development o ormal4.
or academic English is a key instruc-
tional goal or English learners, begin-
ning in the primary grades. Provide
curricula and supplemental curricula
to accompany core reading and math-ematics series to support this goal.
Accompany with relevant training and
proessional development (Level of
Evidence: Low).
Ensure that teachers o English learn-5.
ers devote approximately 90 minutes
a week to instructional activities in
which pairs o students at dierent
ability levels or dierent English lan-
guage profciencies work together onacademic tasks in a structured ashion.
These activities should practice and
extend material already taught (Level
of Evidence: Strong).
One major theme in our recommendations
is the importance o intensive, interactive
English language development instruction
or all English learners. This instruction
needs to ocus on developing academic
language (the decontextualized languageo the schools, the language o academic
discourse, o texts, and o ormal argu-
ment). This area, which researchers and
practitioners eel has been neglected, is
one o the key targets in this Guide.
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3
Checklist orcarrying out therecommendations
Recommendation 1.Screen or reading problemsand monitor progress
Districts shold estalish procedres
orand proide training orschools to
screen English learners or reading pro-
lems. The same measres and assessment
approaches can e sed with English learn-
ers and natie English speakers.
Depending on resorces, districts sholdconsider collecting progress monitoring data
more than three times a year or English
learners at risk or reading prolems. The
seerity o the prolem shold dictate how
oten progress is monitoredweekly or i-
weekly or stdents at high risk o reading
prolems.
Data rom screening and progress moni-
toring assessments shold e sed to make
decisions aot the instrctional spportEnglish learners need to learn to read.
Schools with perormance enchmarks
in reading in the early grades can se the
same standards or English learners and or
natie English speakers to make adjst-
ments in instrction when progress is not
sfcient. It is the opinion o the panel that
schools shold not consider elow-grade-
leel perormance in reading as normal
or something that will resole itsel whenoral langage proiciency in English
improes.
Proide training on how teachers are to
se ormatie assessment data to gide
instrction.
Recommendation 2.Provide intensive small-groupreading interventions
use an interention program with st-
dents who enter the frst grade with weakreading and prereading skills, or with older
e lementary s tdents wi th reading
prolems.
Ensre that the program is implemented
daily or at least 30 mintes in small, homo-
geneos grops o three to six stdents.
Proide training and ongoing spport
or the teachers and interentionists (reading
coaches, Title I personnel, or paraedcators)who proide the small-grop instrction.
Training or teachers and other school
personnel who proide the small-grop in-
terentions shold also ocs on how to de-
lier instrction eectiely, independent o
the particlar program emphasized. It is im-
portant that this training inclde the se o
the specifc program materials the teachers
will se dring the school year. bt the train-
ing shold also explicitly emphasize thatthese instrctional techniqes can e sed
in other programs and across other sject
areas.
Recommendation 3.Provide extensive and variedvocabulary instruction
Adopt an eidence-ased approach to
ocalary instrction.
Deelop districtwide lists o essential
words or ocalary instrction. These
words shold e drawn rom the core read-
ing program and rom the textooks sed
in key content areas, sch as science and
history.
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4 RECOmmENDATIONS
vocalary instrction or English learn-
ers shold also emphasize the acqisition o
meanings o eeryday words that natie
speakers know and that are not necessarily
part o the academic crriclm.
Recommendation 4.Develop academic English
Adopt a plan that ocses on ways and
means to help teachers nderstand that in-
strction to English learners mst inclde
time deoted to deelopment o academic
English. Daily academic English instrction
shold also e integrated into the core
crriclm.
Teach academic English in the earliest
grades.
Proide teachers with appropriate pro-
essional deelopment to help them learn
how to teach academic English.
Consider asking teachers to deote aspecifc lock (or locks) o time each day to
ilding English learners academic English.
Recommendation 5.Schedule regular peer-assistedlearning opportunities
Deelop plans that encorage teachers
to schedle aot 90 mintes a week with
actiities in reading and langage arts that
entail stdents working in strctred pairactiities.
Also consider the se o partnering or
English langage deelopment instrction.