Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of School Psychology journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jschpsyc The eﬀect of the Preparing Pequeños small-group cognitive instruction program on academic and concurrent social and behavioral outcomes in young Spanish-speaking dual-language learners Susan H. Landry, Mike A. Assel ⁎ , María S. Carlo 1 , Jeﬀrey M. Williams 1 , Wei Wu, Janelle J. Montroy University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, Department of Pediatrics, Children's Learning Institute, 7000 Fannin, Ste. 2300, Houston, TX 77030, United States of America ARTICLEINFO Action Editor: Craig Albers Keywords: Dual-language learners English language learners Small-group instruction Professional development School readiness Language deﬁciencies ABSTRACT Academic achievement for young dual language learners (DLL) is a critically acknowledged problem of national signiﬁcance that has been understudied. To address this shortage, this study evaluated the eﬀectiveness of Preparing Pequeños, an integrated small-group instruction pro- gramdesignedtopromoteincreasedlearningforSpanishspeakingDLLinlanguage,literacy,and math.TheDLLintherandomizedPreparingPequeñosinterventionclassroomswerecomparedto control DLL with comparable Spanish language delays and in which the school district's core curriculum was being implemented. Intervention teachers and paraprofessionals, as part of Preparing Pequeños, implemented new classroom and time management systems in order to conduct90minofsmall-groupinstructionfourdayseachweekacrosstheschoolyear.Intotal,51 control and 52 intervention classrooms participated; pre-test measures were completed with 829 children, with 777 of these children also completing post-test measures (7% attrition). Results showedthatinterventionteachersandparaprofessionals,ascomparedtocontrol,showedgreater increases in most of the targeted areas of cognitive instruction (d range=0.60–2.38)andinthe useofsmallgroups(d range=3.32–4.46), progressmonitoring(d =0.17)toinforminstruction, and team teaching (d= 1.94). Intervention children, as compared to control, showed sig- niﬁcantly greater gains in Spanish oral language, print knowledge, phonological awareness, and phonics with small to large eﬀect sizes (d range=0.14–0.52). Also, potentially as a result of greater attention to children's individual needs and support for managing their behavior, inter- vention children, as compared to control, showed greater decreases in school avoidance, anger, and aggression with small eﬀect sizes (d range=-0.22 to -0.29). Results are discussed in relation to the need for greater attention in teachers' training in eﬀective approaches for small- group instruction. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsp.2019.01.001 Received 11 January 2017; Received in revised form 21 November 2018; Accepted 29 January 2019 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: Susan.Landry@uth.tmc.edu (S.H. Landry), Michael.A.Assel@uth.tmc.edu (M.A. Assel), mariacarlo@usf.edu (M.S. Carlo), Jwilliams32@usf.edu (J.M. Williams), wei.wu@uth.tmc.edu (W. Wu), Janelle.j.montroy@uth.tmc.edu (J.J. Montroy). 1 Drs. María S. Carlo & Jeﬀrey Williams are aﬃliated with the University of South Florida. Journal of School Psychology 73 (2019) 1–20 Available online 15 February 2019 0022-4405/ © 2019 Society for the Study of School Psychology. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. T