This study examined the extent to which kindergarten Spanish reading affected English reading growth trajectories through fourth grade among nationally representative Spanish‐speaking bilingual ...students (N = 312) in the United States and whether the association varied by students' English oral proficiency. Multilevel growth curve analyses revealed that stronger early Spanish reading was related to greater English reading growth. Within the stronger Spanish reading group, students with lower English oral proficiency initially began behind their counterparts but caught up with and surpassed them later. Within the weaker Spanish reading group, the difference between lower and higher English oral proficiency groups increased over time. Findings suggest that initially well‐developed Spanish reading competence plays a greater role in English reading development than English oral proficiency.
This experimental study aimed to replicate and extend a previous efficacy study of an elementary grade content literacy intervention that demonstrated positive effects on students’ vocabulary ...knowledge depth, argumentative writing, and reading comprehension. Using a cluster (school) randomized trial design, this replication experiment was conducted with 5,494 first- and second-grade students in 30 elementary schools in an urban school district located in the southeastern USA. Teachers implemented thematic lessons (20 lessons) that provided an intellectual framework for helping students who acquire networks of related vocabulary knowledge while learning science and social studies content. Teachers integrated thematic lessons, concept mapping, and interactive read-alouds of conceptually related informational texts to enable their students to build networks of vocabulary knowledge and to transfer this knowledge to argumentative writing and collaborative research activities. Confirmatory analyses replicated positive findings on science vocabulary knowledge depth (ES = 0.50) and argumentative writing (ES = 0.24) and also extended positive findings to social studies vocabulary knowledge depth (ES = 0.56) and argumentative writing (ES = 0.44). Positive and statistically significant findings were not replicated on domain-general reading comprehension. Exploratory analyses indicated that students’ vocabulary knowledge depth partially mediated the impact of content literacy instruction on domain-specific argumentative writing outcomes.
The purpose of the present study was to examine possible shifts in the presence of academic vocabulary across the past six decades for a continually best-selling first-grade core reading program. The ...authors examined seven program years dating from 1962 to 2013 and computationally determined four categories of academic vocabulary (science, mathematics, social studies, and general academic) in each program. The primary research question was, Did the volume of academic words in a program year rise with advancing years? A secondary supplementary question was, Did the propensity toward academic affinity of a program considered as a whole rise with advancing years? The authors employed two types of academic word measures: (1) A word was deemed to be academic or not, and if it was academic, it was assigned to one of the four academic categories, and then academic words were counted; and (2) a novel measure, academic affinity, was a continuous measure of the probability that a word was academic (in each of the four academic vocabulary categories). The authors conducted Poisson regression modeling and hierarchical generalized linear modeling. The main conclusions were that later first-grade core reading program years included a moderately higher volume of science, social studies, and total academic words as compared with earlier years and that the science, social studies, and general academic affinity of the program as a whole was statistically higher in later years, but in practical terms, the change was not remarkable.
Over the course of a year, student authors in the Juntos NC Writing Project participated in the Literary and Community Initiative to write, publish, and share their lived experiences and identities ...as Latinx immigrants and first‐generation high school students in North Carolina. Throughout the publication process of their collaborative bilingual book titled The Voices of Our People: Nuestras Verdades, student authors actively engaged in pursuing advocacy and activism in three ways: (1) community space as an intentional space for advocacy, (2) writing as a vehicle for collective advocacy, and (3) publishing and sharing as an opportunity for youth activism. The participants’ words and actions demonstrated how youth in community organizations can use literacy practices to collectively advocate for their community and become activists who write about and vocalize immigrant youth’s strengths and needs.
Given the growing evidence of academic language demands embodied in science practices, this study aimed to design and evaluate the effectiveness of a literacy-science integrated program that ...emphasized the incorporation of academic vocabulary instruction and collaborative discussion of a socio-scientific issue in sixth-grade science classrooms in an urban school. The treatment students (n = 73) who participated in the intervention had significantly higher academic vocabulary knowledge and scientific argumentation posttest scores than the control students (n = 62). The effect on academic vocabulary knowledge was particularly greater for bilingual students than their monolingual peers. Mediation analyses revealed that the intervention effects on science content knowledge and scientific argumentation were mediated by academic vocabulary knowledge. Findings indicate that science teachers' instructional scaffolding for academic vocabulary and authentic discourse can not only improve students' academic vocabulary knowledge but also indirectly affect science content knowledge and scientific argumentation via academic vocabulary knowledge.
In this article, the authors introduce ways to use disciplinary literacy (DL) instructional strategies to foster civic engagement and reasoning for middle‐grade multilingual students. Four phases of ...DL strategies—framing, reading, discussion, and writing—are illustrated with examples from an intervention project with sixth‐grade multilingual students. The intervention features a 4‐week Space Exploration unit designed for students to address a contestable and relevant civic question: Should the government increase or decrease funding for space exploration? Teacher instructional moves, reading selections, student discussion excerpts, and writing samples are presented to highlight the language‐rich disciplinary teaching and learning in action and the benefits of multilingual students in their science, language, and literacy learning.
This study examined the extent to which student perceptions of classroom openness and personal characteristics were associated with civic engagement. Survey data including student perceptions of ...classroom openness, which indicates perceived levels of social and political discussions in the classroom, and personal characteristics such as gender, science engagement, and English Learner (EL) status were collected in 6th-grade science classrooms in an urban intermediate school. Civic engagement was measured using the personally responsible and participatory types of citizenship. Results from hierarchical linear regressions showed that student perceptions of classroom openness uniquely predicted the personally responsible citizen but not participatory citizen after controlling for personal characteristics. Science engagement and gender were significant predictors of both citizenship types. Implications for civic education for middle school science classrooms were discussed.
The purpose of the present study was to explore the dimensionality of the English home language and literacy environment (HLLE) construct in multilingual home settings for fourth- and fifth-grade ...emergent bilinguals. The authors also evaluated a framework of mediating mechanisms underlying the effects of emergent bilinguals’ English HLLE on English reading comprehension by testing the mediation role of morphological awareness and vocabulary. Confirmatory factor analytic results showed that home language use and home literacy environment are two distinct but internally related subdomains embedded within the general HLLE construct. This finding confirms the complex and multifaceted nature of HLLE as depicted in the literature. Moreover, findings from sequential mediation analyses indicated that HLLE had no significant direct effect on English reading comprehension but made a substantial contribution to morphological awareness, which in turn influenced vocabulary and further enhanced reading comprehension. The present study contributes to the current literature by providing a more comprehensive view of the pathways through which emergent bilinguals’ HLLE leads to reading comprehension.
The present study used data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Class of 1998-1999 to examine whether the relationship between first-grade word-reading and reading-comprehension ...growth through eighth grade was different for language-minority learners (LMs) versus native English-speaking students (NEs). Among high word readers, LMs' reading comprehension was lower than NEs, but over time, they closed the gap, exhibiting similar levels at eighth grade. Among low word readers, LMs' reading comprehension was similar to NEs', but over time, a gap between LMs and NEs widened. Therefore, initially high word reading particularly advantaged LMs, and low word reading particularly disadvantaged LMs.
