Teaching Reading to English Learners, Grades 6 - 12: A Framework for Improving Achievement in the Content Areas

Retool your whole school for EL achievement 

For any student, middle and high school can be challenging. But for an English learner or striving reader—and the myriad words, phrases, syntax, texts, and concepts they must negotiate on a daily basis—the stakes seem a whole lot higher. Fortunately for content-area teachers, Margarita Calderón and Shawn Slakk make available in a single resource all the best instructional and professional development combinations for expediting comprehension across the secondary grades. 

Really a tool to assist all learners across all language needs, the second edition of Teaching Reading to English Learners, Grades 6-12, provides evidence-based strategies for helping content-area teachers and schools at large: 

• Teach academic language in all subject areas 
• Embed discourse practice through interaction strategies 
• Integrate basic and close reading comprehension skills into lessons 
• Teach drafting, revising, and editing for content-specific writing  
• Use cooperative learning to develop social emotional skills and enhance academic achievement 

Calderón and Slakk know firsthand that if we’re to counter the commonly held narrative of predictable failure among our ELs, it takes a whole school, and they have the evidence to prove it. Read Teaching Reading to English Learners, Grades 6-12, implement its strategies across all classrooms, and soon enough you, too, will maximize the comprehensions skills so critical to our ELs’ long-term success.   

Dr. Margarita Espino Calderón, born and raised in Juárez, is a Professor Emerita/Senior Research Scientist at Johns Hopkins University. Her research and development projects have been funded by the US Department of Education, National Institutes of Health, the US Department of Labor, The Carnegie Corporation of New York, and various State Offices of Education.

One of her empirical studies "The Bilingual Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition (BCIRC)" is featured in the What Works Clearinghouse. The Carnegie Corporation of New York funded her five-year study to develop Expediting Comprehension for English Language Learners (ExC-ELL) to train math, science, social studies, language arts, and ESL teachers on integrating language, reading, and content in core content middle and high school classrooms. With a Title III National Professional Development grant, she implemented "A Whole-School Approach to Professional Development with ExC-ELL" in Loudoun County, VA. She replicated this approach in 29 schools in TX and NC. She served on the National Literacy Panel for Language Minority Children and Youth, the Carnegie Corporation of New York Panel on English Language Adolescent Literacy Panel, among other panels and national committees. She has over 100 publications on language, literacy, and professional development.
In 2025, Margarita was inducted into the Multilingual Education Hall of Fame. 

Shawn Slakk is the CEO and Founder of ABCDSS Consulting Consortium and works with teachers, administrators, school & state agencies to offer strategies and supports for emergent bilinguals and their classmates both K-12 and adults. He is co-author and developer of new professional development sessions for all levels of educators, focusing on whole-school implementation, administrative support and coaching.  As a former Certified WIDA Trainer and Title III SIOP Coach, Shawn brings a wide understanding of a variety of strategies and how they relate to ELs, language acquisition and lesson delivery. 

He served as the Rethinking Equity and Teaching for English Language Learners (RETELL) Coordinator for the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education where he and his team were responsible for developing, implementing, training trainers and evaluating a Sheltered English Instruction endorsement course for administrators and classroom teachers.  The RETELL endorsement is required in Massachusetts to obtain or retain an educator license with more than 40,000 teachers and administrators earning this endorsement.  Throughout his career, Shawn taught ESL in grades K-University, Spanish across all grade levels and curriculums, and even once taught Japanese to K-2 students.  He has served as an elementary and middle school administrator, served at the Central Office level as a district coach and as a state level coordinator.  He started his teaching career teaching Adult ESL at Spokane Community College in Washington state.

Shawn's curriculum and instruction doctorate from the University of Virginia will focus on supporting the needs and instruction of additional-language learners and teachers in reading and writing. He holds an MA in TESOL from Eastern Washington University, a Master of School Administration from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and a bachelor's in English and Spanish education from Whitworth University.