Teaching Reading Exam: ELL, Vocab & Oral

In this blog post, we are diving into practical, research-backed strategies for supporting English language learners (ELLs) in reading class, with a focus on vocabulary development and oral language growth. Whether you teach in Florida where Spanish is the most common home language, or in a district where students come from all over the world, these approaches apply broadly and will help every learner in your classroom.

Supporting the First Language to Build the Second

One of the most effective mindsets a reading teacher can adopt is that of a bilingual educator. This does not mean you need to be fluent in another language. It simply means you are intentionally using the student's first language (L1) as a bridge to their second language (L2).

A powerful tool for doing this is cognates — words that share roots and meaning across two languages. For example, the Spanish word "interesante" and the English word "interesting" are cognates. When a student can see the connection between a familiar word in their home language and a new English word, the meaning clicks much faster. Identifying cognates, using bilingual supplementary materials, and labeling shared Latin or Greek roots are all strategies that work in any classroom.

The research is clear: supporting L1 to build L2 is not just a test-prep strategy — it is the right instructional practice.

Modeling and Expanding Oral Language

Oral language development matters for all students, and especially for ELLs. A key strategy is moving students from simple sentence structures toward more complex, connected ones.

For example, a student might say, "He is putting on a raincoat. It is raining." That is a great start. But the goal is to model and encourage compound sentence frames: "He is putting on a raincoat because it is raining." That one connecting word — because — shifts the sentence from a list of observations to a demonstration of cause and effect.

Teachers can model this kind of language expansion during read-alouds, classroom discussions, and writing instruction. Sentence frames, sentence variation, and explicit modeling of compound structures all build oral language over time.

Understanding the Tiered Vocabulary Framework

When we talk about vocabulary instruction, the tiered framework gives us a practical way to decide where to focus our teaching energy.

Tier 1 words are everyday words — happy, dog, run, house. Students generally know these words by the time they reach school-age reading instruction, and they rarely need explicit teaching around meaning.

Tier 2 words are high-utility academic words. Words like analyze, demonstrate, significant, and predict appear across many subjects and texts. These are the words that unlock comprehension in nearly every reading situation. Tier 2 words are where explicit vocabulary instruction should be concentrated.

Tier 3 words are domain-specific. Photosynthesis belongs to science. Isosceles belongs to math. Onomatopoeia belongs to language arts. These words are important in context, but they are tied to a specific content area and tend to be introduced as part of that content.

Why Tier 2 Words Deserve the Most Attention

Tier 2 words appear everywhere, across subjects and grade levels, which makes them the highest-leverage words to teach. When students understand the word analyze, they can apply that understanding in reading, math, science, and social studies. That kind of transfer is what makes Tier 2 instruction so valuable.

And here is something worth committing to memory: students need 10 to 15 meaningful interactions with a word before it truly sticks. That means one lesson introducing the word is not enough. Teachers need to weave words into daily classroom language through what is called incidental vocabulary — naturally using academic words during instruction.

Instead of saying "let's look at this paragraph," say "let's analyze this paragraph." Instead of "who wants to show us at the board," say "who would like to demonstrate at the board?" These small, consistent interactions across the school day build the kind of deep word knowledge that transfers to reading comprehension.

A Note on Vocabulary Instruction to Avoid

Some approaches to vocabulary instruction are less effective than they might seem. Having students repeat a word aloud many times without context does not build understanding. Asking students to copy a definition from the glossary or dictionary is a tool that supplements learning, but it should not be the main instructional approach. Students need to interact with words meaningfully — not just look them up or say them repeatedly.

When evaluating any vocabulary strategy, ask whether students are genuinely engaging with the word's meaning, connecting it to what they already know, and encountering it in multiple contexts. That is the standard worth holding.

Final Thoughts

Supporting ELLs and all readers in building vocabulary is not about finding one magic strategy. It is about consistently bridging languages, modeling rich oral language, focusing explicit instruction on Tier 2 words, and giving students repeated, meaningful encounters with new vocabulary. When those pieces come together, word knowledge grows — and so does reading comprehension.

If you are preparing for a reading certification exam or want to strengthen your classroom practice, my resources are here to help. They cover the full science of reading — from phonemic awareness to comprehension — in a way that is clear, practical, and built for educators who want to truly understand the content. Browse My Reading Certification Exam Resources →

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