This unique and timely text was designed to help teachers and school leaders understand how the language for academic success can be distilled into four key uses or high level communicative competencies that every student needs to achieve: Discuss, Argue, Recount, and Explain. These key uses have broad applicability across content areas and can readily serve as a language focus that scaffolds within and across grades or departments. This construct helps simplify the complexity of language in a manner that is accessible to teachers, school leaders, and students.