Research on the effects on early bilingualism on reading development is scarce. Here, we tackle this question by investigating whether the exposure to dual-language contexts (use of two languages in the same conversational situation) induces a boost in phonological and reading performance through more balanced spatial auditory attentional skills.…

School literacy in North America continues to focus on society's dominant languages. Literacy curriculum -- particularly during early grades -- has an urgency for children to quickly master emergent literacy skills in the official languages, vindicating the exclusion of literacy in other minoritized languages that multilingual children bring to…

Drawing from a 3-year ethnographic project in one elementary school in the United States, this article examines how a group of 43 first graders perceived and constructed Brazil and the U.S. during a drawing and writing activity in their bilingual (Portuguese-English) classroom. The majority of the participating children (81.4%) either migrated…

This qualitative study examined the perspectives and experiences of seven focal families from Mexican immigrant backgrounds that participated in collaborative project-based learning in their children's bilingual classroom. Projects centered on children's experiential knowledge, and were created bilingually. Findings indicate that parents perceived…

The role of children's receptive vocabulary knowledge in word and nonword reading (decoding) in an orthographically transparent language is debated. Moreover, we have little understanding of how the role of vocabulary might differ between monolingual children and bilingual children from immigrant families (or language minority bilingual children…

Cross-language transfer happens in bilingual reading development. However, little is known about whether L1 affects L2 spelling development. In addition, longitudinal studies are needed to examine the L1-L2 relations developmentally from the beginning of literacy learning. We tested whether and which Chinese (L1) literacy-related skill(s) in…

This mixed-methods study was designed to examine how different home literacy environments shape gender differences in Chinese-Canadian first graders' (N = 76) bilingual lexical attainment and literacy engagement. Quantitative analyses indicated that girls outperform boys in both Chinese (L1) and English (L2) vocabulary. Gender differences were not…

The aim of the study was to examine which predictor variables are related to literacy skills among monolingual Swedish (n = 269) and bilingual Finnish-Swedish (n = 229) children at the first grade in the Swedish-speaking schools in Finland. The participants were assessed in phonological awareness, letter knowledge, rapid automatized naming (RAN),…

In Canada, approximately 12% of school-aged children are enrolled in French Immersion (FI), with some provinces estimating close to 30%. FI programs are intended to produce bilingual individuals who can functionally communicate in both of Canada's official languages. Yet, we are currently underinformed as to how to identify children with French…

The relationships between phonological awareness, rapid naming, short term verbal memory, letter knowledge, visual skills and word reading in kindergarten, and the predictive patterns from kindergarten to first grade were examined in 41 Chinese-Dutch bilingual children living in the Netherlands in both their first language (Chinese) and second…

The 1-year longitudinal study presented here examined the extent to which the ability to build phonologically specific lexical entries as a result of increasing vocabulary size predicts word reading via its impact on phonological awareness within and across languages in 62 emerging English (L1) and French (L2) Grade 1 children (M = 75.69 months,…

This paper investigates the degree of bilingualism and its corresponding effects on the metalinguistic skill of phonological awareness among Grade I ESL learners. It compares full and partial bilinguals' performance in the three tests: initial phoneme detection, final phoneme detection, and deletion tasks. Forty students aged 6-7 carried out…

Purpose: The value of shared reading as an opportunity for learning word meanings, or semantics, is well established; it is less clear whether children learn about the orthography, or word spellings, in this context. We tested whether children can learn the spellings and meanings of new words at the same time during a tightly controlled shared…

Environmental sources of variance in the Italian vocabulary and reading skills of bilingual primary school children from immigrant families (or language minority bilingual children (LMBC)) in Italy were investigated, and the LMBC's skill levels were compared to those of their monolingual classmates. A total of 140 children from the first, third,…

In this article, the authors share their experiences creating and implementing a unit focused on supporting bilingual identities through integrating language domains and translanguaging with authentic writing experiences. Two dual-language first-grade teachers from Colombia and the US worked together to model, celebrate, and support the use of…