Effective Vocabulary Instruction for Spanish-Speaking Students

The populations of Latinos and English language learners (ELLs) in U.S. schools continue to grow, but both groups continue to experience notable achievement gaps, particularly in the domain of reading comprehension. Among all students, including ELLs, vocabulary has been found to be a key determinant of reading comprehension. In light of this finding, the Vocabulary Instruction and Assessment for Spanish-speakers (VIAS) program was initiated in order to develop and test the efficacy of three academic vocabulary interventions for Spanish-speaking ELLs across the grade levels, from kindergarten through 8th grade. All three interventions share the same three core features of the Graves four-part vocabulary framework, sheltered instruction, and native language support. In this paper, the authors provide an overview of these three features and discuss how they were incorporated in each of the three interventions.