Join The Reading League California for an intriguing and informative session with Dr. Julie Washington from UC Irvine. She will share how learning to read depends upon learning the phonemic, phonological, syntactic and morphological structure of words. For children who speak varieties of English that differ from General American English these domains of language may differ significantly from text, making it harder to learn to read and write. In the case of African American children in particular, use of the language variety African American English has been found to influence outcomes in reading, writing, spelling and assessment and this is particularly true for children growing up in poverty. This presentation will focus on the intersection of language variation, poverty and reading acquisition for African American children in preschool through fifth grade.