Academic discussion can create space for student voice and active negotiation of text meaning in the classroom. However, teachers hoping to use academic discussion may find it difficult to draw learners into these discussions if students do not feel a sense of agency--a particular concern for multilingual students or those designated as having…

In this Action & Learning article, we describe the connections between the popular Spanish nursery song "Los pollitos dicen" (The Little Chicks Say) and Aesop's fable's "The Fox and Hen" with the literacy teaching of bilingual Latinx students. In this metaphor, the bilingual teachers represent the Mamá Gallina (Mother Hen)…

As linguistic diversity continues to increase in the United States public school system, schools are expected to meet the needs of their ever-changing student body. While much attention within education research has understandably focused on multilingual learners' (MLs) English language acquisition, an emergent body of work points to science as an…

Writing in school has long been disconnected and inauthentic to multilingual learners due to its monolingual, language-focused, and standardized features. Although more and more researchers have called for and explored newer asset-based writing pedagogies, such as digital multimodal writing, to support diverse learners in response to emerging…

The author describes a heritage language poetry translation project taught in a third- and fourth-grade classroom with both multilingual and monolingual students. Students interviewed family members about their heritage languages, worked with family and community members to choose and analyze a poem in their heritage language, identified essential…

This article explores the unique contributions of 2nd-grade emergent bilingual (EB) students' talk-turns vs. those of their teacher on students' expressions of comprehension during interactive read-aloud discussions in a pull-out classroom. They engaged in eight video-recorded, interactive read-aloud discussions across four books. This mixed…

We present findings across three randomized trials of "Descubriendo la Lectura" (DLL), an intervention designed to improve literacy skills of Spanish-speaking first graders struggling with reading. DLL is a one-to-one Spanish-language literacy program lasting 12-20 weeks offered to a school's lowest performing emerging bilingual first…

The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) have spurred renewed interest in the epistemologies that students adopt as they engage in science practices. One framework for characterizing students' epistemologies is the "epistemologies in practice" framework (Berland et al. (2016), "Journal of Research in Science Teaching,"…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine the significance and directions of the relationships among oral and manual fine motor skills and language abilities among Spanish--English bilingual children. If such relationships exist, this would support a shared biological influence on motor and language development. Method: Participants…

Using the transactional theory (Rosenblatt, 1995, 2001) and translanguaging pedagogy (García, 2009) as guiding lenses, this study explores how 1st-grade Korean-English bilingual students engage in storytelling and meaning construction using two languages when they encounter one of the chosen wordless picturebooks. The findings indicate that…

In here, I provide a description of a multiliteracies elementary classroom's ecology according to how an elementary bilingual teacher and bilingual language learners in her classroom interact and engage with traditional (linguistic) and alternative (multimodal) texts in language arts. This multiliteracies classroom ecology shows their dynamic…

There is a significant amount of research literature on the importance of identifying and building on students' experiences and ideas for making sense of the natural world, especially when engaging in science practices. Simultaneously, approaches to creating justice-oriented science education promote the need to focus on the diverse sense-making…

The main objective of this study is to assess the Spanish literacy competence of students enrolled in bilingual and trilingual programs by analyzing the developmental process and evolutionary course of reading during the first cycle of Primary Education. This analysis aims to determine whether the reading skills in Spanish of students in…

Translanguaging pedagogies support multilingual students by activating prior knowledge, integrating home languages and cultures, and utilizing multimodal learning. However, as equity-oriented pedagogies, they redress long-standing practices of denying students access to their home languages or demanding a strict separation of their interwoven…

In the current study, investigators examined the effects of an instructional reading package consisting of shared reading and systematic instruction (e.g., task analysis, system of least prompts, visual supports, and native language support) in a small group setting on percentage of correct consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) words for three…