The growing number of students whose primary language does not match the language of their schools and a steadily growing performance gap has prompted widespread attention to support emergent literacy gains for those students. This study randomly assigned schools in a Southwestern U.S. state with English language learners (ELLs) in kindergarten and first grade to an experimental computer‐assisted instruction (CAI) condition or a ‘business as usual’ control. The study tracked ELLs performance over one academic year using a nationally normed standardised reading test. The results demonstrated first‐grade students in the experimental condition demonstrated greater gains compared with the control students in the domains of vocabulary, phonics, phonological awareness and text comprehension. Gains for kindergarten were less consistent; however, the lowest language proficient students using CAI experienced greater gains in vocabulary when compared with controls. Results extend prior studies targeting ELL students' reading skill development with targeted CAI interventions.

A considerable adjustment that educators have encountered in the recent decades brought about through globalisation has been an increase in the proportion of learners who are not fluent in the language of their schools. In the United States, varying results have been offered to illustrate the increased rate of English language learners (ELLs) served in schools in schools have been offered. One national estimate demonstrated the substantial changes by documenting a 64% increase in ELLs compared with a 4% growth in overall student enrolment (Casteel & Ballantyne, 2010). The prevailing finding is that ELL student representation in the classroom has been on the rise and is projected to continue to grow for the foreseeable future (Kaplan & Leckie, 2009; Nordby & Loertscher, 2009). However, merely documenting the change in percentage of ELLs in schools fails to provide appropriate attention to the true challenge faced by these learners in the educational landscape. The primary concern is and should be the substantial gap in performance that has been documented over the past 15–20 years for second language learners (Alexander, Entwisle & Kabbani, 2001). In the United States, performance trends documented on the National Assessment of Educational Progress demonstrated a significant gap by fourth grade, indicating a 35‐point deficit in literacy performance for ELLs compared with non‐ELLs – the equivalent to three grade levels of performance difference (Goldenberg, 2011).

This rapid state of change in school composition grows more troubling when combined with the reality that most classroom teachers are underprepared to independently serve the needs of ELLs (Washburn, 2008). Given the challenge, many teachers have to effectively serve a growing number of students in the classroom, a variety of strategies have been proposed to ensure all students receive high‐quality instruction that is translated into meaningful learning gains. While considerable effort has been expended to support teachers through professional development experiences to become familiar with needs common among ELLs, our attention in this study is focused on curriculum and pedagogical approaches that are delivered directly to students to support literacy and reading skills for children in the primary grades.