A Team Effort: Collaborating Around Structured Literacy for ELLs

Teaching English language learners (ELLs) to read in a new language is a collaborative effort. But what does that collaboration look like? When does it happen? And what makes it work? When we heard Alana Gerstein, a Multilingual Learner Specialist, and Janelle Rodriguez, a Reading Specialist, present their work together around structured literacy for ELLs, we knew we had to learn more! Here are some of their lessons learned and tips for instruction.

Part I: Collaboration

Chester County, Pennsylvania

Alana and Janelle are both based in the Chester County Intermediate Unit (CCIU), a regional educational agency serving 12 districts just west of Philadelphia. Chester County is home to both rural and suburban districts, with district EL populations ranging from 2% to 20%. As a county, there are many types of ELs represented. Some students were born in the U.S. but speak a language other than English at home, and other students have arrived as teenagers with limited first language skills. As the EL population is increasing countywide, districts are looking for ways to best meet the early literacy English needs of EL students, especially at the Junior High and High School level.

How It All Began

Alana and Janelle began collaborating when Janelle was assigned two high school MLs as part of her Reading Specialist caseload who required daily reading intervention. However, given that both students were new to the country and new to English, the district requested that Janelle also receive training from an ELD specialist to ensure that her reading instruction aligned with their language needs. Alana was assigned to consult with Janelle weekly to help her implement language support within the reading intervention time.

They explain that this opportunity was possible because their administrators saw value in collaboration as a way to bridge a gap that included ELD needs and literacy needs. It took scheduling flexibility from the district, administrators, CCIU, and both specialists to make their collaboration possible — time they could use for observation, co-planning, communication, and reflection. For example, Alana was given weekly time to observe Janelle and then they both would meet together to discuss students' progress and plan instructional moves. Without this structured time, they note, it would have been difficult for them to have meaningful conversations about integrating students' language development with reading instruction time. In addition, Alana highlights Janelle's willingness to have someone observe her and give recommendations. This open-minded approach and curiosity to learn and grow was an essential part of why their collaboration led to positive outcome for students.

An additional tool that supported their collaboration was a document created by one of their administrators where they both collected their progress monitoring data and notes about language supports that were being implemented with students. Having one document allowed everyone to be aware of students' progress and how the collaboration worked.

Getting to Know Each Other's Strengths

Another important aspect of the partnership that Alana and Janelle have developed is that they have learned more about each other's strengths and how those strengths complement each other. For example, Janelle is well-versed on structured literacy practices and is comfortable teaching students of various needs and backgrounds how to read and write. She has experience teaching each element of Scarborough's Reading Rope and using different reading curriculum programs as a guide for instruction.

Alana writes, "Janelle was extremely collaborative and open to learning more about second language development. She came into the work with an asset-based perspective and wanted her students to be successful. From Janelle, I learned about the importance of being creative and trying different approaches to best meet students' needs. Janelle was able to keep her work grounded in reading intervention and the reading program while also building language for students through different strategies. She wasn't afraid to trust herself and our collaboration to bring in different resources and approaches, and that confidence was inspiring."

As an ML specialist, Alana is well-versed on language instructional practices for English learners, including strategies for building language and supporting students with English comprehension. She has been able to look at the curriculum and reading instruction and make suggestions for how to implement scaffolds to support students in accessing the curriculum. She also has frequently used the PLUSS framework as a guide.

Janelle writes, "I learned that with a little help and flexibility, it can be simple and so rewarding to add PLUSS and EL strategies into an already existing literacy curriculum. I also learned the value of integrating extra opportunities for language and vocabulary enrichment to bridge that gap in the current curriculum that is so crucial for EL students. In this process, I learned firsthand the importance of explicit early literacy instruction alongside the EL strategies, especially for our older students.

Understanding and building upon each other's strengths also helped them as a team better support their students. They write, "We were both confident in what we knew and what we could contribute, but we really looked at the students as a puzzle that we needed to solve together. We frequently bounced ideas off one another and neither of us was afraid to bring up concerns or strategies, but we were also comfortable enough to say 'I don't know' at times. We also worked together to advocate for our students. We met with administrators together, and went into the meeting as a collaborative team rather than two individuals. This was helpful in making our points clear. Also, as students get older, they may not have the time to work on early literacy skills. In our collaboration, we could identify the parts of early language and early reading instruction that students needed, and address them together. Coming from both a reading lens and a language lens helped to identify these components more intentionally."

What Makes It Work

Some of their other lessons include the following:

• Identifying goals for collaboration: Alana and Janelle stress that it's important to be clear about roles and responsibilities. There should be conversations about how and when the team is collaborating and who is providing the instruction. For example, is the EL teacher helping the reading specialist to provide reading intervention with scaffolds for the MLL, or is the ELD specialist working on reading instruction during the ELD time? They note, "Usually, ELD and reading intervention are taught in isolation. Students may be working on reading skills in one place and working towards English language proficiency in another. But when we collaborate, we can address both students' reading and English needs. This helps to make the instruction relevant for students and support them in all areas at once."
• The power of observation: If possible, making time for teachers to observe one another can help to keep the conversation focused on the individual students. Both teachers can see how the student is responding to instructional strategies and then provide suggestions for how to better accommodate them or meet their needs. While planning together can be helpful, having this observation time helped them to be clear about next steps and student needs.
• Keeping an open mind: Having an open and curious mindset set the stage for a trusting relationship to occur. They share the following reflection: "Knowing that we were in a safe, respectful space of collaboration helped. Bringing our own knowledge and expertise helped build on giving the students exactly what they needed. It really helped to have collaboration time at the end of the weekly observation, so we could discuss what went well and what we could try for the next lesson. Knowing that we could trust each other in a respectful way helped to have that open communication so that we could take ideas and strategies and be open to change or constructive adjustments that could help."
• Sharing their collaboration: Alana and Janelle are also sharing their collaboration in different settings. They worked together to present at the 2025 Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE) ELD conference to share their collaborative experience and what their learned together about teaching reading to MLs (during a session which led to this article!). They will also be featured in PDE's Language Lens podcast.

How to Jumpstart Collaboration

We asked Alana and Janelle to share some tips for educators so that they can jumpstart collaboration around ELLs. Here are some of their suggestions:

1. Build relationships with others in your school. Learning from one another and having a relationship coming into the collaboration can be helpful.
2. Set a schedule and routine. Questions to ask include: Will one teach and one observe? Will we have set meeting times each week? How will we structure this meeting time? Try to identify the shared goals of your collaboration, both long-term and short-term, and then create a structure that can help to address these goals.
3. Start the conversation with more questions than answers. What information do you need about students and about the instruction before you can plan next steps? Rather than coming in ready to share your immediate thoughts, taking a "curious approach" to the students can help to collaboratively frame your work together.
4. Keep the focus on the students. Remember that you are there to support the students, and their needs should come first.
5. In order to get administrator buy-in, don't be afraid to share what's working! Administrators have so much on their plates, they may not always be aware of what is happening with each teacher or each student. If something works, share it with them! Let them know how you are collaborating, and how it has contributed to student success. Initiate conversations with administrators about why collaboration is important. Come prepared with resources, studies, and information that show the benefit of collaboration. Give specific examples about how you and your teammate can work together to better meet students' needs.

Part II: Structured Literacy

Now let's dig into some of the insights that Alana and Janelle have developed in their instruction, co-planning, and coaching experiences. In this part of the article, they share their lessons learned.

Key Takeaways

1. Structured literacy can not be taught in a vacuum.

We can't think about teaching MLLs to read as separate from building their language and background knowledge. Instead, language instruction should be integrated with literacy instruction. For example, teach vocabulary that builds their background knowledge, and then ground your reading instruction in those vocabulary words.

2. Identify what students bring to the table.

Rather than focusing on the language that students are missing, make an effort to match your instruction to the language that they already have. Start by identifying similarities between the two languages (English and the first language), and begin your instruction with English sounds and phonemes that match the first language.

If you're unsure of where to start, try to gain an inventory of what students already know in their first language, and in English. Draw on initial assessments and conversations with families to identify how much students know in each of these areas in both languages:

• Letter names and sounds
• Phonemic awareness and manipulation of sounds
• Sight words
• Reading comprehension
• Syntax and grammar

From here, you should know where students already have reading skills, and where they need instruction. For example, students that have strong knowledge of letters and sounds in their first language, but not in English, will likely still need support with learning the letters and sounds in English. You can start by building connections between the first language and English. Students that can read independently in English but lack comprehension can benefit from explicit language comprehension strategies.

3. Start with your curriculum and build on it.         

Use your current curriculum as a starting place, and then add in language support for your ELs.  For example, giving visual charts and sentence starters can help students to access the English demands of the reading program. Consistent gestures can also help with introducing sounds, and be flexible about the order that you introduce the sounds. Starting with sounds that are similar in the first language can help students to master them quicker and more confidently.

4. Look for ways to engage with programming and curriculum decision-making.

It is also important to ensure that all voices are valued when choosing curriculum or making programming decisions regarding literacy instruction. EL specialists can provide insight into how well a curriculum addresses students' language development, and how much scaffolding or accommodations would need to be made to best meet students' needs.

Our Questions

We've also learned the importance of asking good questions. Here are some we asked when looking at our students needs.

• How much progress should the students be making?
• What is expected for English speakers in this program, and what is expected for ELs?
• Why is this a struggle?
• Is he struggling with this skill because of his language needs, or because of another issue?
• How can we try this a different way?

Here's how we addressed these questions: We looked at each student's background and reading progress and talked about what may be causing some to stall, while others made consistent progress. Collecting regular data helped to look for patterns and make instructional decisions. We used our shared document as a place to look for trends and patterns and then make decisions together that we could share with administrators.

We also asked ourselves how we could communicate what we are doing with other staff members to make the support consistent across the day. We found that some teachers were open to hearing about where we found success with the students, and how those same strategies can be applied in other settings. Other teachers and administrators were hesitant to change their current practices.

Tips for Instruction

Some of our tips include the following:

1. Start with your reading curriculum. Identify the areas that are already supporting ELs with language development, and where there are gaps. Identify strategies that can address these gaps.
2. Use scaffolds. Add in visuals and gestures to help with building language and comprehension. Visuals can help with introducing sounds, vocabulary words, and any aspect of structured literacy. Gestures can help students to remember sounds and tie it to new English terms. Sentence starters can help with completing writing assignments.
3. Make connections to home languages. Find opportunities to bring in students' first language knowledge. Start by introducing sounds that are similar in both languages, and bring in cognate charts as a support.
4. Teach thematically. This can help with introducing vocabulary and giving students multiple opportunities to practice reading and writing with new language. Pre-teach vocabulary with visuals that align to specific themes. Then, practice sounds and reading with the new vocabulary, and then use the same vocabulary to complete comprehension activities.

If you are working with a curriculum that doesn't include structured literacy, you can work backwards. Use Scarborough's Reading Rope as a guide and identify which aspects of the reading rope are included in the curriculum, and what needs to be added. For example, the curriculum may include many opportunities for students to build vocabulary and background knowledge, but does not include explicit instruction in phonics or phonemic instruction. Free resources like UFLI can help to add instruction in these areas.

Ideas for Professional Development

For teams that will work together, providing PD around collaboration practices can be helpful. These sessions can focus on setting a schedule and a structure for collaboration, and possibly defining shared goals and roles and responsibilities. This will help teams to begin the year with clear collaboration practices in place.

Professional Development sessions that ELD specialists and Reading Specialists can attend together are another helpful way to explore what reading instruction looks like in both spaces. This will help to center the conversation of who is providing reading instruction, and how both teachers are supporting students in their English language development.

Other possible topics for PD:

• Scarborough's Reading Rope and Structured Literacy practices for ELD specialists
• Analyzing assessments to identify students' language and literacy needs

Bonus:

Here is a sample lesson and/or lesson components from Slide 15

A typical sequence of reading lessons for MLs included:

• Review previous sounds and letters taught
• Teach new sounds and letters- with visuals and examples as needed
• Introduce and review new vocabulary words related to the passage that students will be reading.
  • This is a good chance for students to practice letter sounds and with the vocabulary words. For example, if the student is working on digraphs and some of the vocabulary words have digraphs, they can practice reading the words with the digraphs independently
• Read a story or a short reading passage. UFLI is a good resource for decodable texts that include specific sounds and word parts
• Talk or write about the story to practice reading comprehension. Students may need graphic organizers or sentence stems to help with this work
• 2-5 minute chat/ wrap up. This is a good time for students to practice oral language skills, and to add in comprehension checks related to the reading passage.

Recommended Resources 

• LETRS training
• UFLI- pictures of mouth formations and vowel valley; decodable texts 
• LIPS is a great program that has pictures
• PLUSS framework and SIOP can help to add language support into reading programs and reading instruction

About the Authors

Alana Gerstein has spent the past 15 years working in the ELL world. She spent six years teaching Elementary ELD in New York City before her family relocated to Pennsylvania. In PA, she spent a few years working with adults before teaching high school Multilingual Learners in Career and Technical Education (CTE) classes. As a Multilingual Learner Specialist, she spends part of her time working with students and part of her time supporting the Chester County districts with their ML professional learning needs. For example, she facilitates a network made up of ESL specialists from across the county who meet quarterly to discuss ML policy updates and instructional practices. She also travels to districts to meet with teams of teachers and administrators to support them in working with MLs.

Janelle Rodriguez has been an educator for 20 years. This includes work as a PreK, Kindergarten, and First- and Second-Grade Teacher. She has worked at Title 1 schools and Dual Language Schools in Las Vegas, Nevada and in Pennsylvania. She is currently a Traveling K-12 Reading Specialist and Interventionist with the Chester County Intermediate Unit covering a wide range of schools and districts.