Valley City Public School District

ABSTRACT This paper is the first to examine the longitudinal results of six years of implementation of Literacy Squared, a biliteracy model for Spanish/English speaking emerging bilingual students. This model includes paired literacy instruction with grade-specific time allocations for Spanish literacy and literacy-based ELD. Furthermore, cross-language connections are a vital component. This study uses descriptive statistics and correlations to analyze Spanish and English reading and English language proficiency data on a cohort of 58 emerging bilingual Latino students in four schools as they moved from kindergarten through fifth grade. Data show gains in students’ biliterate development. Findings have implications for bilingual instructional programs and support the research that providing students with literacy instruction in two languages allows students to develop their literacy skills simultaneously. In doing so, their literacy development is not hindered in either language, and they have the opportunity to obtain advanced levels of English proficiency.