Young children in diverse urban contexts bring to school transnational knowledges, complex multilingual literacies, and cultural practices which reflect global mobility and the blended nature of their social worlds. For children such as the Latino first graders we have been working with for the past three years, their lived experiences do not…

This study explored how an audience-focused writing curriculum mediated the literacy development of bilingual Latina/o first-grade students. Drawing on translingual theories of literacy and scholarship describing the role of audience and audience awareness in skilled writing, this study qualitatively documented and analyzed students' writing and…

Previous studies about ELs have reported data on active English Learners--defined as those students who have not yet reached proficiency on a state English test--at a specific moment in time. This study, for the first time, analyzed the long-term trajectories of 18,000 CPS students who began kindergarten as ELs and followed their progress all the…

In response to chronically low gifted identification rates in the majority of elementary schools among Black and Hispanic/Latino students, the Wake County Public School System (WCPSS) launched Nurturing for a Bright Tomorrow (NBT) in Fall 2014. NBT was a multicomponent curricular enhancement program designed to train early elementary school…

This mixed-methods study analyzes the Spanish literacy performances of dual language students, including both emergent bilingual Latina/o and African American students, in the 1st grade of a dual language program. The findings suggest that emergent bilinguals across racial groups performed similarly well on Spanish literacy assessments overall.…

Purpose: The purpose of the current study was to examine the role that the first language (L1), Spanish, at Pre-Kindergarten plays in predicting second language (L2), English, word reading in first grade. In addition, it examines the role of conceptual vocabulary in predicting word reading in English. Method: As part of a longitudinal study of…

The purpose of this study was to examine and compare the classification accuracy of early static prereading measures and early dynamic assessment reading measures administered to 600 kindergarten students. At the beginning of kindergarten, all of the participants were administered two commonly used static prereading measures. The participants were…

Early academic achievement has been shown to predict high school completion, but there have been few studies of the predictors of early academic success focused on Latino students. Using longitudinal data from 750 Mexican and Dominican American families, this study examined a cultural model of parenting and early academic achievement. While Latino…

This quasi-experimental study tested the efficacy of a research-based biliterate reading strategy, Lotta Lara, that is part of a larger paired literacy instructional program. Its purpose was to investigate whether Lotta Lara, which focuses on reading fluency, comprehension, and oracy through whole group instruction, impacted first grade emerging…

Researchers observed pre-kindergarten through second-grade public school classrooms, specifically noting child-centered and teacher-directed pedagogical approaches, by simultaneously examining: (a) student behavior and activities, (b) teacher instructional orientation and rationale, and (c) overall classroom environment. Dissimilar to previous…

Parental engagement is critical to children's educational achievement. Before and during elementary school, it is crucial for parents to be involved in their children's education in order to foster development and achievement. Hispanic parents' immigrant status, coupled with a lack of English proficiency, means that they often find themselves of…

This paper draws data from a 5-year ethnographic study of young multilingual (Mixteco/Spanish/English) children in their early childhood classrooms. In this paper, we focus on two of the children and their distinctive paths as they develop language and literacy. Using a sociocultural and multimodal theoretical framework we examine how these two…

Drawing on the work of Celia Genishi, this article discusses data from an ethnographic case study of young Latina/o children, starting in their four-year-olds classroom in a Head Start Program through their first grade year in a dual-language program in a public school. The children attended a bilingual Head Start program that followed a…

The authors investigated whether participation in school-based extracurricular activities would predict social and behavioral outcomes (school membership, peer prosocial orientation, and prosocial behavior) associated with school social capital in a group of Hispanic middle school students from the United States of America. Results of hierarchical…

Research suggests that identity matters for school success and that language and identity are powerfully intertwined. A monolingual solitudes understanding of bilingualism undermines children's bilingual identities, yet in most bilingual education classrooms, academic instruction is segregated by language and children are encouraged to engage in…