© 2025 Vista Higher Learning Vista’s Bridges: A Study of Reading Growth in MLs 5 STUDY SUMMARY AND WHAT IT MEANS FOR ML CLASSROOMS Foundational word-reading accuracy remains a gatekeeper for middle school students. The research on fluency and comprehension interventions offer mixed results, showing greater success for students with stronger entry skills. There is some suggestion in the literature that fluency deficits should be closed first. To achieve stronger comprehension gains. Overall, when providing instruction over the full range of literacy skills, it may be beneficial to screen for and remediate decoding until students surpass threshold benchmarks, to continue to teach morphology and vocabulary explicitly within content units and to increase focus on comprehension as foundational skills improve. Taken as a whole, the studies examining ML middle school students are consistent with the conclusions for the broader population: foundational decoding matters. At the same time, the studies raise an ML-specific caution: Unless academic vocabulary and oral language are addressed concurrently, decoding gains may stall before translating into comprehension growth. The continuing need for ML English language instruction at the middle school level has led to the development of several products and services to help MLs develop language skills. Among those products is Bridges, which is the focus of this study. This study is the story of a successful intervention incorporating Bridges to achieve substantial growth in reading skills for middle school students whose first language is not English. ML students in classes receiving instruction that included Bridges achieved substantial levels of reading skill growth exceeding typical levels of growth for ML students, and at levels similar to their non-ML peers in grades 6, 7, and 8. The Bridges Program Bridges is a comprehensive literacy program created for multilingual/English learners and striving readers. The program builds language and reading proficiency through activities, engaging texts, and content-driven lessons. It provides a variety of print and digital classroom resources that provide support and motivation, as well as tools for teachers to assess ongoing learning progress, discover skills gaps, and personalize instruction. Bridges is designed to ensure proficiency in vocabulary, phonics, reading, listening, speaking, writing, and grammar skills and to promote academic language development and writing skills. The program engages students with motivating literary texts and informational texts in science, social studies, math, and the arts, and helps students access grade-level content to prepare them for mainstream classes. Bridges aligns with the WIDA, CA ELD, TX TEKS, CCSS (ELA and Math), NGSS (Science), NCSS (Social Studies), and CEFR (ELT/International) standards.
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