The new "Common Core State Standards" (CCSS) (NGACBP & CCSSO, 2010) require teachers to prepare all learners, including adolescent English learners (ELs), to develop academic literacy practices. This article describes an instructional intervention in an urban public high school using the genre-based "Reading to Learn" (Rose & Martin, 2012) approach to teach 20 adolescent ELs to write academic persuasive essays. Results indicated a significant increase from pretest to posttest in participants' effective use of key academic linguistic resources that function to create persuasion, suggesting that the "Reading to Learn" approach may support adolescent ELs' development of academic literacy practices.