National and state literacy measures indicate that African American students are consistently outperformed on these assessments by their counterparts. Without utilizing a deficit mindset, this presentation will focus on possible reasons for the underperformance and emphasize the knowledge teachers need to teach African American students the structure of the English language. What must teachers know about the phonological and morphological features that African American students use and how these features differ from the structure of English? To close the opportunity gap between African American students and their counterparts, this presentation will focus on research-based strategies for teaching African American students’ skills such as phonemic awareness, phonics, spelling, and grammar with language variation in mind. Register at: https://bit.ly/TRLILPittman.