Teaching Bilingual Learners: Effects of a LanguageBased Reading Intervention on Academic Language and Reading Comprehension in Grades 4 and 5

The authors report on their quasi-experimental field test of a languagebased reading intervention framed around language components, language functions, discussion, and reading comprehension. A sample of 239 Portuguese-English and Spanish-English bilingual students in grades 4 and 5 worked in small instructional groups. Half of the students were assigned to the intervention group and the other half were in the control group. The results of the intervention group showed positive effects on students' academic language and reading comprehension skills.