When ELL students have better command of oral English, they also have improved reading and writing abilities. When we take into consideration the fact that very few classroom teachers have been trained to promote oral language development, the significant achievement gaps between ELLs and their non-ELL peers are not at all surprising. Only by engaging ELLs in academic conversations can teachers ensure close the literacy gap. <br /><br />This resources guides teachers in the use academic oral language development as a scaffold for the demands and rigor of writing. Academic oral language development is embedded in writing lessons through the strategic teaching and use of Think-Pair-Share. At the same time, the author focuses on building background knowledge experiences so that students have a basis in content knowledge for writing. Finally, the Frayer model is used to strategically teach vocabulary development, so that students have a foundational vocabulary set to draw upon as they write. <br /><br /><em><strong>Moving from Speak to Written Language With ELLs </strong></em>is especially timely with the release of the Common Core standards which calls upon students to develop writing proficiency across the content areas.