This book is one of the few that focuses on oral language development, a crucial but often overlooked component of academic development for ELLs. It helps fill a gap in the professional resources teachers need to help their English language learners reach high levels of oral and written English proficiency.

—David and Yvonne Freeman

Authors of Teaching Reading in Multilingual Classrooms and Essential Linguistics

Oral reading is powerful enough to simultaneously support every student’s comprehension learning and scaffold English language learners’ progress toward proficiency. But not just any kind of oral reading will do. To help everyone in your class, you need effective, engaging strategies that can motivate all readers and help them learn to make meaning with texts—the kind you’ll find in Comprehension and English Language Learners.

The 25 oral reading strategies in Comprehension and English Language Learners support students with differing levels of English proficiency during regular reading instruction—from beginners to those completely comfortable with their new language. Michael Opitz (coauthor of Goodbye Round Robin, Updated Edition) and Lindsey Guccione help you go beyond oral reading activities such as round robin or popcorn reading that have no research base and that can actually inhibit reading progress. With their strategies, you’ll instead help English language learners:

• develop and monitor reading and listening comprehension
• evaluate texts and engage with authors
• learn social and academic vocabulary
• connect writing, reading, speaking, listening, and viewing
• get motivated to read on their own.

In addition, Opitz and Guccione make determining students’ level of English proficiency easier with a primer on effective ELL assessment. They show you how each strategy can work within or across levels to help English learners make progress or consolidate gains. Each strategy is clearly presented and ready to use today with teaching suggestions, classroom examples, suggested children’s literature, and online resources.

Supplement your silent-reading program with oral reading that works. Read Comprehension and English Language Learners and teach with its strategies. Then listen to your English language learners to hear how powerful oral reading can be for developing comprehension.