Background/Context: Students classified as Long-Term English Learners (LTELs) are those who have not gained fluency in the English language, even after being enrolled in the U.S. K-12 educational system for five to seven years (Olsen, 2014). Although LTELs are not consistently tracked across states, we know they constitute a sizeable portion of…

This study employed an alternating treatment design with a baseline for three English learners in an urban Midwestern middle school to investigate the utility of a culturally adaptive intervention package called Preview-Review. Participants were provided with a scripted bilingual preview of conceptual and contextual information relating to the…

The effect of writing strategy instruction on three middle school students' narrative writing performance in actual classrooms was investigated. The results indicated that the writing strategy instruction improved writing performance of students with and without disabilities, as well as students who were English language learners when provided…

General education teachers are challenged with meeting the unique instructional needs of every learner in their classrooms, which increasingly include English learners (ELs) and students with learning disabilities (LD). This article uses vignettes to demonstrate how a middle school content teacher uses five strategies: building prior knowledge,…

This paper reports the outcomes of an experimental evaluation of "Direct Instruction Spoken English" ("DISE"), an English language curriculum that focuses on developing English speaking, listening, and comprehension skills in English Learners (ELs). Twenty-nine middle schools in three states were randomly assigned to teach…

This paper reports the outcomes of an experimental evaluation of "Direct Instruction Spoken English (DISE)," an English language curriculum that focuses on developing English speaking, listening, and comprehension skills in English Learners (ELs). Twenty-nine middle schools in three states were randomly assigned to teach "DISE"…

Understanding of visual representations is a pivotal skill necessary in science. These visual, verbal, and numeric representations are the crux of science discourses "by scientists, with students and the general public" (Pauwels, 2006, p.viii). Those who lack the understanding of these representations see it as a foreign language, one…

This study examined teachers' language use across the school year in 6th grade urban middle-school classrooms (n = 24) and investigated the influence of this classroom-based linguistic input on the reading comprehension skills of the students (n = 851; 599 language minority learners and 252 English-only) in the participating classrooms. Analysis…

Traditional school science instruction has been largely unsuccessful in reaching diverse student groups and students from, in particular, underrepresented backgrounds. This paper presents a case study of an urban, dual-language middle school classroom in which the teacher used an alternative instructional approach, involving her students in an…