Many educators are tasked with the dual responsibility of facilitating emergent to advanced bilingual students' (EABs) content learning, while also simultaneously supporting students' ongoing literacy and language development. One pedagogical tool that has garnered growing attention in recent decades is the teaching-learning cycle (TLC). This…

Composing is an essential part of literacy development in early childhood classrooms, and writing experiences are continually changing through advances in technology. Writing in a new language can be particularly challenging for emergent bilinguals as they navigate learning how to spell in English as part of the writing process. New pedagogical…

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…

Background/Context: Early childhood education in the United States is currently suspended between the belief that young children learn through dynamic experiences in which they are able to create and experiment, and the belief that young children's emerging literacy and math skills require formal instruction and assessments to ensure future…

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 the biliterate reading strategy, which focuses on reading fluency, comprehension, and oracy through whole group instruction, impacted…

Drawing from a qualitative case study that examined the language practices and learning in a first grade bilingual classroom, the author discusses one teacher's daily process for the literacy event of the morning message. Primary findings indicate that the ways the teacher listened and responded to students during the morning message provided…

This paper describes a project, including the design, development, and use of a mobile application (referred to as application hereafter) for learning Chinese as a second language in a bilingual primary school. The application was designed for iPod Touch Apple technology with the purpose to facilitate learning of a fundamental set of 200 Chinese…

This is a qualitative case study (conducted in an urban, public school classroom in the United States) of the collaborative composing processes of two groups of first-grade students designated as English Language Learners (ELLs) as they wrote in a writing workshop context. I focused on a specific type of the students' hybrid composing practices:…

This study investigated the writing processes of first grade bilinguals from majority- and minority-language backgrounds who were in a two-way bilingual education (TWBE) program. The program integrated native English and native Spanish speakers for all or most of the day, promoting high academic achievement, dual language and literacy development,…

This study presents an intensive comparative analysis of selected basic sentence patterns and transformations in Spanish and English manifested in the responses of Spanish-speaking disadvantaged children selected to receive instruction in the following groups: (1) Oral-Aural Spanish with special science materials in Spanish; (2) Oral-Aural English…

Learning science in a meaningful way involves more than doing a series of activities directed towards anticipated outcomes. Learning science entails teacher and children talking together as "co-constructors" of knowledge (Barnes, 1976). Karen Gallas (1995) has described her long-term observations of the kinds of talk which contribute to…

This study compared 5 groups (45 each) of disadvantaged first grade children learning to read 16 basic sight vocabulary words. The subjects were enrolled in 1 of 16 classrooms on three campuses of a school district in Texas located on the southern border between the United States and Mexico. Furthermore, all spoke Spanish as their first language.…

A study to determine the effects of oral-aural teaching (intensive language instruction) techniques on pupils' gains in reading proficiency involved 1418 pupils. A sample of first graders and a sample of second graders were each subdivided into four groups. Group one was exposed to oral-aural teaching methods in English for the presentation of…

Thirty-eight bilingual (Spanish-English) first graders with language delays were compared on rate of receptive acquisition of English prepositions and pronouns. Subjects who received instruction in Spanish prior to instruction in English acquired the English prepositions and pronouns twice as rapidly as subjects who received instruction in English…