ENCOURAGING BILITERACY 1
Running Head: ENCOURAGING BILITERACY
Encouraging Biliteracy
in a
Fifth Grade English-Only Classroom
Stephanie Abraham
Department of Language and Literacy Education
University of Georgia
ENCOURAGING BILITERACY 2
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to explore the development of biliteracy among bilingual
Spanish/English speaking students. The research question of what ways biliteracy can develop
in an English-only classroom with fifth-grade Latinos who are bilingual speakers of Spanish and
English guided this study. Combining ethnographic, action-research, and case-study
methodologies, this study used classroom observations, student interviews, and student artifacts
to collect and triangulate the data concerning biliterate development. The findings show that
funds of knowledge can be a source to initiate and extend biliteracy development. Also, dual
language books scaffold reading, especially for those who are substantially dominant in one
language for reading and writing. While reading bilingual books, students used translation
strategies such as highlighting or circling the unknown words to equivalent words in the included
translation. Easily decoding words increased students’ willingness to read in Spanish and helped
emerging bilingual students to derive meaning from the text. Finally, the incorporation of
bilingual poetry alleviated some frustration among bilingual students while reading in Spanish or
English because of the brevity of the texts and multiple opportunities to practice.
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Introduction
This study presents the findings from research conducted by a teacher/researcher using a
combination of ethnographic, action-research, and cast study methodologies. I, the
teacher/researcher, sought to observe, describe, and support the inclusion of funds of knowledge
and biliteracy development in a traditionally and historically monolingual classroom as equitable
and critical pedagogies for Latino, bilingual students. Looking across public schooling in
Georgia, I asserted that languages other than English are being valued socially, economically, or
educationally. Socially, first languages connect people to their families and cultural history.
Economically, multiple languages are used to negotiate a world-wide capitalistic system, and a
person who knows some of those languages is more competitive in this kind of market.
Educationally, research has established that knowing and learning to read and write multiple
languages contributes to increased cognition (Bialystok, 2001) and academic achievement as
measured by standardized test scores (Snow & August).
Although, the terms ELL and English for Speakers of Others Languages [ESOL] are used
by the state of Georgia and the school where this study took place, the term emerging bilingual
(Garcia, Kleifgen, and Falchi, 2008) counters the deficit view embedded in the label, English
Language Learner, which conveys bilingual students as lacking knowledge of English while
ignoring knowledge of another language. However, these terms, ELL, ESOL, and emerging
bilingual, are used when referring to the settings and the students’ placements within the state
school system. The question, in what ways can biliteracy among Spanish/English bilinguals be
developed by a teacher who does not speak Spanish in an English-only classroom, guided this
study.
Conceptual Framework
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Several educational researchers have nominalized the concept that all children have
valuable knowledge that should be recognized and used in classrooms; however often the
knowledge of the marginalized is dismissed and devalued by educational discourses. Gonzalez,
Moll, and Amanti (2005) popularized the term, funds of knowledge which encapsulates this idea;
Thomson (2001) used the term, virtual schoolbag to explain that all students bring knowledge
with them to share, but only some to get unpack their backpacks. Gutierrez and Rogoff (2003)
referred to students’ ways of knowing and learning as repertoires of practice, a term to
destabilize concepts of language and culture, and Baynam (2006) called it “bringing the outside
in” and argued that this may “interrupt the orderliness of classroom discourse to bring the outside
in and the contingency of teacher responses to such ‘interruptive’ moments in the classroom
discourse. (p. 25). These concepts encompass many kinds of knowledges that students have
when they enter classrooms, and often the knowledge of those who lived outside the norm in US
society are silence, ignored, and actively corrected. In this paper, I forefront the linguistic
knowledge that students bring with them to classrooms, more specifically the linguistic
knowledge of bilingual students from low socioeconomic backgrounds. I argue that this
linguistic knowledge must be examined in ways that also connects the microlinguistic practices
of this linguistic knowledge to larger systems of power produced by macrodiscourses concerning
those languages.
Moll, Amanti, Neff, and Gonzalez (1992) described funds of knowledge as the valuable
knowledge that all people have that allows them to go about and live their daily lives. The
concept stresses the ideas that students and their families are competent people with their own
possession of language and cultural knowledge which can be used to construct more knowledge
in the classroom. Teachers can draw upon the schema possessed by marginalized families as a
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valuable resource for instruction in the classroom. In their study the ethnographic methods used
by classroom teachers changed the way that they saw marginalized families, and the teachers
were able to complement their classroom pedagogies with the knowledges they observed in their
families’ homes. Although, students’ linguistic funds of knowledge was not the only focus in
these ethnographic studies, the linguistic funds of knowledge has been forefonted in other
studies, and this research heavily informs my argument concerning the intersection of student
knowledge, their language, and the positioning of students and their language by educational
discourses.
In a study called the Family Stories Writing Project, Dworin (2006) integrated biliteracy
with funds of knowledge. He took the funds of knowledge concept and specifically focused on
the linguistic “fund” of knowledge to create a space where bilingual children could further their
biliterate development.
The Family Stories Project adds to our understanding of the ways in which biliteracy may
be an important tool for children’s learning in classrooms and how it mediates their
thinking by providing greater access to social and cultural resources. Including translation
as part of the project demonstrates that bilingual children have sophisticated levels of
language knowledge and abilities that teachers can easily make part of literacy learning
by valuing biliteracy. The study suggests that the children’s intellectual development was
enhanced because they could use both English and Spanish for their work in this literacy
project. (p.519)
In his project, families stories were used to “mediate their thinking by providing greater access to
social and cultural resources” (p. 519). The students collected a story from a family member,
wrote it, and translated it to Spanish or English depending upon the original version. This study
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demonstrated that funds of knowledge facilitated biliteracy development by drawing knowledge
from home, using bilingual students as biliteracy peer resources, and merging the two in the
classroom to further this development.
Connecting to the importance of the family in maintaining and extending biliteracy,
Peterson and Heywood (2007) also found in their interviews of immigrant parents, teachers, and
principals that the support of families’ first language led to additive practices of English versus
subtractive. Surprisingly, some teachers and principals found parents with limited or no English
speaking abilities supporting the students L1 and L2 at home with books, newspapers, and
homework help. The researchers recommended the following for schools and teachers regarding
their policies concerning first language support for students and families. One is to make duallanguage books available and/or invite parents into classrooms to create the books. Two is for
school officials to learn the languages of students in the school. Finally, parents should be
encouraged to read and write to their children in their first language. The previous studies have
bearing on the bi/multiliterate practices that schools and teachers should follow, and in the next
section I focus on what has been found in classroom pedagogies that leads to bi/multiliterate
students.
The Academic Argument for Biliteracy
Focusing on the academic reasoning to use forms of multilingual education for children, I
synthesize empirical evidence that shows that a person must possess a certain level of oral
language proficiency before reading and writing proficiency can be developed in that language.
Thomas and Collier (1997) claim that educational proficiency in the student’s first language is
the best predictor for academic success among students who are acquiring English as another
language. This claim speaks to the importance of first language development in and out of
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classrooms. Two-way or one-way bilingual educational models are strong forms of education for
emerging bilinguals because they lead to this language proficiency; several other meta-analyses
of research concerning emerging bilinguals also support this claim by showing the advantages of
two-way bilingual education programs (August and Hakuta, 1997; Slavin & Cheung, 2003;
Snow et al., 1998). These dual language models of education are the strongest because first
language (L1) literacy development aids the development of second language literacy skills, and
these researchers recommended that first language literacy should be developed and supported in
schools. Emerging bilinguals benefit from developing first language literacy skills, and in turn
these skills transfer to other languages that they may be learning at the time or after first
language literacy.
In terms of academic achievement, educational research has firmly established that first
language proficiency and literacy are beneficial to students trying to acquire literacy skills in
another language. Cummins (2001) states that unequivocal support of L1 literacy is needed and a
pedagogical perspective should not be adopted that eliminates one language or the other. Slavin
and Cheung (2003) found additive effects for bilingual children who received bilingual strategies
for teaching reading in English and the first language at the same time. According to this finding,
there is no need to delay reading and writing instruction in English if the child is receiving
literacy instruction in their first language. This means that the bilingual and biliterate classroom
foster the acquisition of first and second languages more so than a monolingual environment for
a bilingual student. Some lingering questions surround this unequivocal support, such as how
multiple languages and literacies may be supported in contexts that may not fit the ideal situation
of dual language immersion program or school. Additionally, new work shows that complete
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mastery in first language literacy is not necessary before beginning literacy instruction in another
language (Garcia et al., 2006).
Many of the studies that show the positive effects of bilingual education use a
combination of bilingual strategies that taught reading in the home/first language and English at
the same time (Slavin & Cheung, 2003 p. 40). This idea of not separating languages and
developing two literacies at the same time will be revisited in the section on biliterate
development, but it is fundamental in establishing the bilingual as unique to the monolingual. A
bilingual student is not merely two monolinguals in one, and their literacy development does not
occur in two separate contexts. Cummins (2001) unequivocally states that “strong and
uncompromising promotion of L1 literacy is a crucial component, but we should adopt a
both/and rather than an either/or orientation to L1 and L2” (p. 121). Multiple languages can
complement one another if promoted together, instead of seeing one as detracting from the other.
Multilingualism and bi/multiliteracy has been argued as avenue for metalinguistic
awareness and divergent thinking (Moll & Dworin, 1996). In an ethnographic study of fourteen
sixth and seventh grade students, Jimenez, Garcia, and Pearson (1996) looked at the reading
strategies of successful Latina/o readers in both English and Spanish. They found that the
successful readers used cognates, activated prior knowledge, and consistently translated from
English to Spanish or Spanish to English to draw conclusions from the text. The less successful
Latina/o readers only used these strategies minimally or not all. Additionally, bilingualism and
biliteracy were viewed as assets by the successful Latina/o readers and as handicaps by the less
successful readers Latino/a readers. Among the students were four monolingual English speakers
who also used the strategy of activating prior knowledge to draw conclusions, but they did not
use the biliterate abilities of translation and searching for cognates, however the comprehension
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levels of the successful Latina/o readers and the monolingual readers were similar. This suggests
that numerous strategies may lead to increased comprehension, and the bilingual student may go
about comprehending in a manner different than the monolingual student.
Multilingualism and multiliteracies provides more ways of thinking, and acquiring two
languages broadens those tools through access to cultural resources and metalinguistic awareness
(Moll, Saez, & Dworin, 2001). Based on this idea, educators dedicate an enormous amount of
time to developing language and literacy for young students in hopes to establish a solid
foundation for future learning across disciplines. When two languages are involved in literacy, it
has been established that cross-linguistic transfer occurs as suggested in Cummins’
interdependence theory (1981). This means that an even greater repertoire of language and
literacy is being developed among biliterate students. If this principle is applied specifically to
biliteracy, reading and writing skills learned in the first or second language will transfer to the
other. Logically, it would seem that biliteracy would be an even greater intellectual
accomplishment and benefit, but it seems that biliteracy has not only been neglected among
fields of research but also in early childhood classrooms (Moll, Sàez, & Dworin, 2001).
Biliteracy and Pluriliteracy Classroom Practices
The work of Nancy Hornberger, one of the most prevalent scholars on biliteracy, is not
extensively reviewed here; however, in one manner it is included because her continua model of
biliteracy is implemented in many of the studies reviewed in the upcoming section. The inclusion
of the individual studies gives more specificity to the ins and outs of a daily classroom life where
biliteracy occurs. For brevity, Hornberger (2006) explained that “the continua model of biliteracy
uses the notion of intersecting and nested continua to demonstrate the multiple and complex
interrelationships between bilingualism and literacy and the importance of the contexts, media,
ENCOURAGING BILITERACY 10
and content through which biliteracy develops.” She presents the model as way to disrupt the
binaries in language learning, such a fluent or not, competent or not, and instead reframes
biliteracy to “draw attention to the continuity of experiences, skills, practices, and knowledge
stretching from one end of any particular continuum to the other” (p. 156.)
Multiliteracies and biliteracy classroom practices have received a relatively small amount
of attention in recent educational research. To me, this absence makes sense in a society where
multilingualism/multiliteracy is not especially valued, and the current educational discourses
promote monolingualism as the norm, which in turn produced monolingual standards of
academic achievement. As Moll, Sáez, and Dworin (2001) point out that it is surprising that
“given the predominance of bilingualism in the world and the proliferation of studies about
literacy, that there is a paucity of research on becoming literate in two languages, or more” (p.
436). Classroom research informs us, educational agents, as to how to create classrooms spaces
where multiliteracy and biliteracy may be an outcome. Moll and Dworin (1996) argue that an
“essential element” for bilingual/multilingual classrooms is that students learn “to read and write
in both languages for academic purposes, where biliteracy is an integral and legitimate part of the
intellectual culture of the classrooms, and where both languages are involved substantively in
academic tasks” (p. 240). They need to make this claim because often in bilingual programs the
non-dominant language is seen only a tool to acquire English, and literacy in the non-dominant
language may be foregone.
In a case study of third grade bilingual students Moll, Sàez, and Dworin (2001) found
four conditions conducive to biliterate development. In this classroom, Spanish and English went
unmarked, and either language was used for academic work and support. Multiple texts were
available in both languages, the students were free to engage with them in multiple ways, and the
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students exhibited a transfer of literature competencies across languages. Rigorous academic and
socially-oriented content was evident in the bilingual reading and writing of students. Ultimately,
the students in this study learned how to use their multiple languages as a resource for expanding
their thinking about themes and topics. Reyes (2006) found in her case of study of emerging
bilingual preschoolers at home and at school that support from peers and adults in all social
contexts was the most important factors in facilitated the emergence of biliteracy. She also found
biliteracy to be bidirectional in that the student’s L1 influenced their L2 as well as their L2
influenced their L1. Perhaps this study can further establish the idea that “if children continue to
have access to and opportunities to function in both languages and writing systems, they will be
more likely to maintain and continue to develop their bilingualism and biliteracy” (p.289). In a
case study in a bilingual school that tracked four Spanish/English emerging bilinguals from
kindergarten to second grade, two factors were found that contributed to spontaneous biliteracy
(Reyes, 2001). The first is the presence of a learning environment that uses the cultural and
linguistic capital of the child, and the second is a focus on student social play. In this study, the
students took up a bilingual repertoire as a game to be played with and laughed during the
process of negotiating their biliteracy. In this case study, the teachers drew upon the student’s
natural experience to generate writing ideas, in turn using these experiences validated the cultural
identities of these students and it “[unleashed] the potential for bilingualism and biliteracy rather
than forcing them to choose between their two cultures” (p.116).
Similar to Reyes, Dworin (1996) also conducted a case study of second and third grade
Spanish/English bilinguals who were developing biliteracy in the classroom. He looked at the
ways the teacher set up peer interactions to foster natural language use to include codeswitching. This created a situation where the students were linguistic resources for one another;
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these peer resources were valuable avenues for student learning giving them access to
vocabulary, language structure, and language pragmatics. Dworin (2003b) further discussed
biliteracy in a case study of Daniel, a 7 year-old Mexican American student, who was becoming
biliterate in Spanish and English. His conclusions stated that Daniel was becoming biliterate
because he thought of his bilingualism as normal and useful for communicating, there was an
additive context for language, the languages were unmarked, and he was able to use various
reading strategies to draw conclusions from books in both Spanish and English.
Worthy, Rodriguez-Galindo, Assaf, Martinez, and Cuero (2003) found in a case study of
fifth grade bilingual students in a bilingual education program that they students were still
experiencing immense pressure to transition to functioning in English only. It seemed that even
though the school environment supported the ideas of bilingualism and biliteracy, the larger
political discourses were saying English is more important. This study illustrates the difficulty of
maintaining bilingualism and biliteracy among a discourse of monolingualism, even in a
bilingual education program that attempts to present both languages as unmarked. Certainly
maintaining bilingualism in bilingual school in the United States’ predominantly monolingual
society is difficult, but it is even more difficult when the classroom is also considered
monolingual. In a rare study of Spanish/English biliteracy developing in the English-only
classroom, Manyak (2006) claimed that biliteracy could be developed in the monolingual setting.
However, he is not optimistic about the “fleeting” attempts of the teachers in this study to foster
biliterate development in a de-jure, English-only environment versus an environment using
strong, systemic forms of bilingual pedagogical models. The greatest disparity occurred among
the highest performing and lowest performing students in the classroom. It seemed that the
students who were more comfortable switching between English and Spanish were able to
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benefit the most from the biliterate practices implemented in the classroom. These same students
had also received strong forms of bilingual education in their kindergarten and first grade
classrooms. One particular student who had recently immigrated to the United States and was
just beginning to acquire English showed little progress in developing reading or writing skills in
Spanish or English by the end of the school year. However, Manyak predicted that this student
would not have been more successful if the classroom was English-Only without the biliterate
support. This study further supports the claim for rigorous classroom biliteracy development and
negates the unnecessary separation of languages in the bilingual or the monolingual classroom.
In Cahnmann-Taylor’s and Preston’s (2008) study of emerging bilingual students in an
afterschool poetry program they found how biliteracy in poetry was “a model for exploring
creativity and multiculturalism in English education” (p. 235). Even though this study was not in
a public school classroom, the findings showed many similarities to the previous studies for
instance, “poetry [was] a vehicle for language development, [that invited] bilingual and
bidialectal poet-students to draw upon all of their linguistic and cultural resources” (p. 235). The
dynamic combination of languages around a rigorous intellectual task has appeared to be
fundamental in fostering the further development of both languages in a given context.
Additionally, the authors suggested that “bidialectal and bilingual poems not only encourage[d]
students to tap into their own varied linguistic resources, but [could] also lead students to the
riches of writers in the English canon such as Chaucer, Shakespeare, Blake and Burns.” This
connection to other poets and thinkers is critical because these artists also “employed verse and
vernaculars to address taboo contemporary concerns with language, class, and sexuality” (p.
250). This idea of bi/multiliteracy engaging more than the acquisition of language for students
will be further explored in the next section.
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To conclude this section on findings concerning the bi/multiliterate development of
emerging bilinguals, I first address Manyak’s claim that biliteracy can be developed in the
monolingual setting. Overall, I argue that it cannot. Instead, I suggest that the typical
monolingual classroom needs to shift a space of pluri/multilingualism. Multiliteracy has the
potential for practice and development in the space that values multilingualism. The classroom
where this occurs will have to meet certain criteria for this multiliteracy to emerge. The teacher
will play a key role by taking up ideologies that search for untapped linguistic knowledge in
students. The linguistic, cultural, and social capital held by the students would be actively
brought in the classroom to inform classroom knowledge. Cooperative learning that encourages
code-switching and translanguaging would be present in the classroom. Peers would be resources
for the development of biliteracy. Supporting the non-dominant language would not be only an
excuse to enhance English acquisition and development, but literacy in the non-dominant
language would be a goal. Ultimately, biliteracy would be developed because it is valuable as a
resource, and it is part of the identity and everyday practices of the students.
More than Language Learning
The previous section showed what classrooms may look like that use multiliterate
practices to develop multiliteracy in their students, but more than language learning may be
happening in the classroom that acts as a multilingual and multiliterate space. Garcia (2009)
argues that educational spaces that promote multilingualism are the ones that recognize what she
calls “translanguaging.” She defined translanguaging as “the act performed by bilinguals of
accessing different linguistic features or various modes of what are described as autonomous
language, in order to maximize communicative potential” (p. 140). This approach to
“bilingualism is centered, not on languages…but on the practices of bilinguals that are readily
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observable in order to make sense of their multilingual worlds” (p. 140). To focus on the
everyday practice and not on the language shift how educational researchers and public school
educators may go about creating these translingual spaces. One, prescriptive notions of teaching,
such as best strategies and activities are no longer fore fronted, and for that matter those
strategies and activities will vary and change depending on the observable practice of the
student. Two, because of the dynamic nature of learning that a focus on translanguaging
practices will create, it makes the outcomes of that practiced pedagogy different for each child.
This idea of multiple outcomes stands in stark contrast to what is currently expected from US
public school educators and students. Some recent studies that explore biliteracy beyond the
language learning are reviewed here.
For example, Medina (2010) found in a critical discourse analysis of student’s Spanish
oral narratives that told of their reactions to Spanish children’s literature about immigration that
“border worlds were embedded in discourses that signified time, places, and actions” (p. 51). The
data showed in “this study that background knowledge in literature response is not static, and it
is not knowledge from the past brought to the present” (p. 51). Instead the students brought a
“dynamic view of making history, situating their experiences within current issues of global
mobility and migratory movements” (p. 58). Connecting to students through language was a way
of “expanding the limits of what constitutes an acceptable response in a literature discussion and
a valid story in students’ authoring processes could perhaps help us develop global/local or
translocal practices, where the students’ identities, histories, and imaginations are at the core of
how they understand literacy events” (p. 58). This leads to argument that multilingualism goes
beyond academics and cognition. In fact, multilingualism may be e a way to create “deeper
engagement and a sense of belonging in school contexts.”
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Likewise, Cahnmann (2005) wrote that many “studies have located linguistic practices in
bilingual encounters as parts of larger systems of social inequality,” but it is “less common [to]
have” studies where “discourse[s] [are] examined for [their] potential for resistance rather than
containment” (Cahnmann, 2005, p. 231). Returning to Cahnmann-Taylor and Preston (2008)
study that illustrated this resistance with their practice of “varying [the] course through the
writing of individual and group-generated poems, listening for meaning rather than insisting
always on ‘correct’ grammar and spelling, are freedoms we imagine within the context of a
poetry unit in English classrooms.” (p. 250). Furthermore, the bilingual poems countered
normative discourses in society, again, like the well-known poets (Chaucer, Shakespeare, etc.)
often read and taught in typical American English classrooms. In this instance, I see how
translanguaging can produce socially critical students, and student social criticism may be
directed at a system that has long oppressed and devalued their linguistic practices.
Wynne (2002) wrote that her students “were silenced by language bias born of racism,
biases that crippled their inquisitive manners” ( p. 206). A multilingual pedagogy may unsilience
them and when students can “use their language and their stories in the classroom might be one
of the greatest lessons of empowerment we could give all of America’s children.” She continues
to advocate that “telling our students of the audacity of ordinary young people like themselves,
who dared to think they had the right to shape the world around them, might do more toward
creating critical thinkers in our classrooms than any of the other pedagogical tricks that we have
up our sleeves” (p. 216). One way that students can shape the world is by interrogating the
superiority of languages, choosing and practicing their languages, and the learning those
languages well.
Methodology
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Based on the findings of the previous research, I implanted the following classroom
practices: Cooperative learning that encouraged code-switching was present in the classroom;
bilinguals became resources for the development of biliteracy; supporting Spanish literacy
development was not only an excuse to enhance English acquisition and development; biliteracy
was developed because of its value as a cultural, social, and economic resource; dual language
books and poetry were present in the classroom every day; dual language writing was accepted
and encouraged.
Participants and Setting
The school was in Georgia. The average student population is 70% Latino, 25% AfricanAmerican, and the remaining 5% of students coming from various racial/ethnic backgrounds
including White/Anglo students, Vietnamese, and Indian. Additionally, the school is Title I with
98% of the students qualifying for free or reduced lunch. The school has met Annual Yearly
Progress [AYP] as established by No Child Left Behind [NCLB] for the past seven consecutive
years. Additionally, the city has bilingual and bicultural Latino and African-American
population. Latino and African-American stores, churches, and social groups are active in the
community. This study took place in a fifth grade regular education class of twenty-one students.
Nineteen students participated. There were seven Latinos, nine Latinas, two African-American
girls, and one African-American boy who participated in the study.
Teacher Researcher
My first language is English; I was born in Georgia, and I am White/Anglo-American.
At the time of the study, I had conversational knowledge of Spanish. I used inquiry and
constructivist-based pedagogies in the classroom by using topics that interest the students
including explorations into student culture through relevant literature, music, self-guided
ENCOURAGING BILITERACY 18
projects, and real life learning activities. I affirmed their families’ fund of knowledge by
connecting to the students’ families through letters, phone calls, and home visits, as well as
believing that my students and their families are competent people who have substantial value to
our school, community, country, and world. I created create an environment where I hoped that
biliteracy in Spanish and English would emerge. Bilingual Spanish/English picture books,
Spanish picture books, and collections of bilingual Spanish/ English poetry were displayed and
shared daily in the classroom. Bilingual comic strips were projected daily for morning work.
Family literacy kits that included a bilingual book and activity were sent home with students, and
bilingual family stories and poems were written.
Data Collection
This study stems from methods in action research, ethnography, and case study. I
conducted classroom observations through the school years, kept field notes, interview students,
and collected student artifacts as sources of data. Since I was the teacher and the researcher, I
observed the classroom all day, noting events that involved biliteracy development. At the end
of the day I wrote a reflection that included summaries, concerns, and questions evoked by the
day’s observations. Fifteen students were interviewed. Numerous examples of student work
were executed, collected, and examined to triangulate observation and interview data.
Data Analysis
After the first three interviews were transcribed, themes began to emerge among the
student interviews, and after a week of classroom reflections themes were also evident.
These early categories were: the presence of Spanish-speaking interlocutors at home who
influenced the biliterate development of the student; personal and cultural interest such as soccer
and TV shows; the influence of Spanish books and libraries on access to Spanish literacy
ENCOURAGING BILITERACY 19
activities; the presence of biliteracy activities in the regular classroom; and the frustration at the
difficulty of reading and writing in Spanish. Data collection and analysis were intertwined and
cyclical (Allen, Erlandson, Harris, & Skipper, 1993). Based on these themes, I began to alter
classroom instruction. Specifically I wanted to lower the frustration experienced by many
students when reading or writing in Spanish by choosing easier texts, using a computer with
Spanish grammar/spell check for Spanish-writing, and sending home bilingual stories to elicit
parent help/involvement. While more interviews were collected, classroom attitudes and culture
began to shift because of the changes to classroom instruction. I coded the reflections using the
above categories, and I created a checklist for classroom student observations using these
categories as well. This focused classroom observations on the specific themes, and it allowed
me to scan the entire classroom searching for moments to capture and illustrate biliteracy
development. It became easier to check off the student, the category, and write a brief note as a
reminder of the moment that fell under the category. The concept web created from the first
themes continued to grow and connect throughout data collection. Connections and themes from
this web are further elaborated in the next section.
Findings
At the beginning of this study I handed Gisela, Plumas para almorzar/Feathers for Lunch by Lois
Ehlert. Her response was, “But I can’t read Spanish!” She would not attempt to read, what I
perceived as a simple picture book, independently, so I sat with her to help her decode the
Spanish text. Eight weeks later, Gisela begged to take home a higher level biography of Frida, in
Spanish, to read with her father; she brought it back the next day with the empathetic comment,
“Her life was very sad.” What happened during this study that changed Gisela’s perspective of
ENCOURAGING BILITERACY 20
Spanish reading so significantly? Based on the data collected through observations, interviews,
and data, this change is described.
Gisela
The first week after winter break, I shared a new assignment with the class. “We are
going to collect family stories,” and I began to share my own collection of a “family story”
passed down from my father. I showed the students my messy notes and shared the story of my
great-grandfather losing his wife and walking a hundred miles from his cabin in the North
Carolina mountains to the city, so he could work in a factory to raise enough money to pay for
his children’s train tickets into the city where they would begin a new life. For the next few
days, I shared other published family stories, such as Chicken Sunday by Patricia Polacco and
The Christmas Gift by Francisco Jimenez. As family stories began to appear, students asked if
their dad riding a bull or being afraid of cows could be used as a story, and I responded, “Of
course!”
Gisela pulled me aside one day to tell me a brief version of the story she had collected.
She told me about coming home to find her mother gone. She called her father to ask where her
mother was, and he said, “She’s in jail.” Her mother was stopped in her car, and it was
discovered that she did not have papers. Her father was desperately trying to find lawyers and
money to get her out of jail. She asked if she could write about this, and I responded with teary
eyes, “Yes, but I would you like to you write some of it in Spanish.” At first she was hesitant,
seeing that she still held to the idea that she could not read or write in Spanish. I suggested that
she write only her father’s words in Spanish, reasoning that those words would be spoken in
Spanish to her, and she could use those as a source or “fund of knowledge” for generating
ENCOURAGING BILITERACY 21
Spanish text. She took the suggestion, and an excerpt of this bilingual story can be seen in
Figure 2.
[Insert Figure 2 About Here]
As I continued in the classroom, I saw frustration expressed by students toward books
entirely in Spanish or lengthy. I began to check-out bilingual poetry books for the classroom to
provide form of scaffolding so that Spanish text would become more accessible. From
interviews, it seemed that students were having trouble locating Spanish books (because there
were so few) in the classroom, so I created a crate for the bilingual poetry books and announced
to the class its contents and placement. Soon after our normal story-time routine, I began asking
bilingual students to read a poem with me in English and Spanish, hoping to create a new routine
that would establish bilingual reading as normal part of the day. Students did not seem interested
at first, but I continued modeling the bilingual reading. Gisela came to me with a book, The
Empanadas that Abuela Made/Las empanadas que hacía la Abuela by Diane Bertrand, a recipe
told in a cumulative, repetitive folk song. She wanted to take the book home to practice so that
she could read it with me the next day during our newly created bilingual shared reading time.
The next day we laughingly and flawlessly read this story to the class in English and Spanish.
Students wanted the recipe, and suddenly the excitement around bilingual reading surged higher.
Concurrently, students were setting up story boards during our Language Arts/Writing
block to draft their family story. I watched Gisela struggling to write hers. She asked if she
could work at home, and I agreed. The next day she came to school with a handwritten, singlespaced, story that was more five pages long. Awed, I began to read. I realized that during the
past couple of weeks, Gisela’s mother had come home, but she was set to appear in court in
couple of weeks. Gisela began laying out her story, so that she had space for illustrations when it
ENCOURAGING BILITERACY 22
was finished. This same week, I interviewed her for this study. She disclosed to me that she did
not like asking her parents for help with homework, but her mother was instrumental in
providing her with Spanish books, so I decided to send home a literacy kit with bilingual
directions and a collection of bilingual poems, My Name is Jorge on Both Sides of the River by
Jane Medina. A couple of days later, she returned with a bilingual poem, “My Shadow/Mi
Sombra”, along with a metaphorical illustration.
[Insert Figure 3 Here]
Gisela was checked out early one day in February for what I thought was a doctor’s appointment.
Later I found out more of Gisela’s family story. Her mother and their friend had picked her up
so that she could go to court with her mom. While waiting her turn for appearance, Gisela and
her mother witnessed another undocumented immigrant receiving his sentence. He was taken
into custody, and so were his children who were with him. They began to cry as the DEFACS
workers took them from the courtroom. As the judge adjourned for his lunch, Gisela’s mother
told her to wait in the car, and that if she did not come back, their friend would drive her home.
Her mother was now afraid that not only might she be taken into custody, but her daughter might
be taken from her as well. Gisela’s mother was ordered to deport by May 8th, 2009, or she would
be taken into custody. The family has planned their move back to Guanajuato, Mexico for the
first week in May, and Gisela’s story ended.
On portfolio night, Gisela’s parents came to see their daughter’s work displayed on her
desk and around the room. They read Gisela’s story, and her father chuckled at Gisela’s writing
her mother’s bail at $100,000,000. I had purposefully not corrected this because it demonstrated
the impossibility and hopelessness Gisela felt when she heard the amount they must raise to free
her mother. Due to the loans for the bail money, Gisela’s father will stay in the US to pay back
ENCOURAGING BILITERACY 23
them back, while his wife and children will leave for Mexico without him. Before leaving the
classroom, he walked over to one display wall to read Gisela’s poem, “Mi Sombra,” Gisela’s
little sister commented, “He helped her with that one.” I realized that bilingual literacy kit had
achieved its intended purpose of creating a space around bilingual literature for families to
interact among.
Nearing the end of the study, Gisela chose to research and dress up as Frida Kahlo for our
Biography March. It was this choice that led to the begging for the Spanish biography of Frida
to take home and read. Gisela’s biliteracy growth was evident in observations and her classroom
performance, and one final piece of student work produced independently illustrated this
development. Gisela’s bilingual poem was inspired by Lyon’s (1999) poem, “Where I’m From,”
and is seen in Figure 4.
[Insert Figure 4 About Here]
Tony
Unlike Gisela, Tony no longer receives ESOL services and now attends Spanish class
daily. According to the stated standardized tests given in English, he performs above average
across content areas. However, after writing his family story entirely in English, his response to
my request to translate it was, “How do you say rock in Spanish?” At first, I was taken aback,
not realizing how much Spanish he had lost. I paired him with a peer to discuss translation, but
he was reluctant to work on translations, so I wrote a note home to his dad that he needed help
translating it into Spanish. Tony came the next day with his hand-written, father-supported
translations, and he got to work adding them to his story. After typing it and turning on the
Spell/Grammar check in Spanish, we realized there were still more mistakes. The story went
home for several more nights and eventually a final bilingual version was printed and illustrated.
ENCOURAGING BILITERACY 24
Without the presence of Tony’s father, a translation would not have been possible in this
instance. In Tony’s interview, he disclosed the support of several Spanish-speaking interlocutors
who aided his biliteracy development, mainly his father through readings of the newspaper and
his older brother’s interest in soccer. Indeed, the interest in soccer seemed to converge among
three Latino students -Carlos, Tony, and Antonio- with Spanish print being highly associated
with their soccer interest as accessed in magazines, newspapers, and the internet. Still, he
expressed his reluctance and even embarrassment surrounding speaking Spanish, but by
connecting to Tony’s interlocutors at home, biliteracy developed at his home, Spanish was
preserved, and possibly a language shift was avoided. At the end of the study, Tony showed
progress in his attitudes toward biliteracy and his ability to write bilingually. For an assignment,
he independently wrote a bilingual “Where I’m From” poem (Lyons, 1999) as seen in Figure 5.
[Insert Figure 5 About Here]
Antonio
As previously stated, Antonio loves soccer. He goes to great lengths to read his Spanish soccer
magazines by calling his 12-year-old cousin in Mexico City, slowly spelling out the unknown
word, and his cousin pronounces it for him in Spanish. Antonio receives Spanish instruction
every day at school for 50 minutes and no longer receives ESOL services. I would like to return
to the daily read-aloud time and share a brief moment of Antonio diving into biliteracy. The day
before, a monolingual student had responded to my request for a volunteer reader in Spanish
with, “They don’t like reading in Spanish.” I did not respond, but continued to wait for a
volunteer, and immediately Roselyn stood and read a poem from The Dream on Blanca’s Wall
by Jane Medina and kept the book for the next 30 minutes reading and rereading poems in
Spanish and English. On this day, when I asked for a Spanish reader, the usually shy Antonio’s
ENCOURAGING BILITERACY 25
hazel eyes met mine, and he volunteered. Afterwards, I took a brief moment to ask him why he
volunteered, and he responded, “I’ve never read Spanish in front of anyone before, I wanted to
know what it was like.” That day was a turning point for the daily bilingual read alouds.
Because of new energy and willingness to read bilingually, a schedule of daily readers was
created and posted in the room. This new daily shared reading time ranged from ten to twenty
minutes, and the bilingual poetry crate was often asked to be replenished with new books.
For his family story, Antonio also wrote a short, but funny, bilingual family story
retelling his previous fear of cows.
When I was three years old I was scared of cows. Then I wouldn’t get close to them
because I was scared.
Cuando yo tenía tress anos yo tenía miedo de vacas. Luego yo no me acercaba a ayas por
que tenía miedo.
So when I had to feed the cows I left the tray far away and then the cows started to get
closer so I started running.
Lugo cuando les tenía que dar de comer les de java la comida un poco lejos y las vacas
venia donde estaba yo pero yo corrí.
I was scared because I thought the cows were mean because of the way they looked.
Yo tenía miedo porque yo pensaba que estaban enojadas con migo.
Then when I was four years old, I was no longer scared of cows because I learned that if
you look mean it doesn’t mean that you are.
Luego cuando yo tenía cuatro anos ya no tenía miedo de vacas por que aprendí que no
son malas.
I complimented Antonio on his story and translations during his interview, and he stated
that he did so well because, “Carlos helped me.” The necessity of Spanish-interlocutors in the
form of peers to aid the biliteracy development was essential to his ability to create a bilingual
story. Antonio’s mom came to portfolio night, and she read the story aloud in Spanish to her
other children, and we all laughed at his silly fear and poignant illustrations. The last drawing
had a tiny cow giving a meager “Moo,” with a huge Antonio bravely waving. The same access
ENCOURAGING BILITERACY 26
to his work would not have been present during portfolio night if the story had been written in
only English. His mother spoke a little English, as I spoke only a little Spanish, but with the
bilingual stories, parents accessed their child’s work and immediately connected, critiqued, and
responded to it.
Critical Biliteracy
An unintended reward of using funds of knowledge as a source and guide for choosing
books, topics, and designing lessons was the occurrence of critical literacy moments. As Moll
(2001) laments, often classrooms located within the milieu of the working–class are consumed
with teaching only basic skills and using a banking idea of instruction. It seems that when
biliteracy happens with Funds of Knowledge as a theoretical lens then a natural byproduct
emerges, critical literacy. A few instances from this study illustrated this emergence. After a
bilingual reading of “Quitting” by Jane Medina, I posed a question following the last line of the
poem, “Maybe he quit being my brother/Quizás, dejo de ser mi hermano.” “How many of you
know someone who quit high school?” Every hand went up in the classroom, including my own,
thinking of my mother. For a few minutes the students shared their connections and thoughts on
why those individuals quit high school and what they were doing now. Several students
mentioned that these friends or relatives were not allowed to return to school, even if they
wanted. Briefly, we explored reasons for this, taking on the perspectives of the student, the
parent, and the school system. We questioned school policies that would expel students from
high school permanently or so it seemed, and we discussed that the students felt powerless and
could not complete school even if they wanted to. Taking on perspectives and questioning
power are two important aspects to critical literacy (Jones, 2006). This brief poem had disclosed
a story of an older brother’s choice to quit high school and the subsequent changes to his
ENCOURAGING BILITERACY 27
relationship with his little sister, but at the same time it allowed us to discuss and deconstruct
some of the perspectives and beliefs surrounding high school drop-outs.
By initiating the collection of a true family story, some serious topics were brought to the
forefront. Lora’s story entitled La Vida de Mi Mama/My Mother’s Life, written entirely in
Spanish, chronicled her mother’s journey back to the US from Mexico, while illegally crossing
the border, hiring a Coyote, and being caught by the Border Patrol on her first attempt. Lora’s
story led to the discussion of “illegal” immigrants and eventually to creation of some persuasive
papers arguing for labor rights for all immigrant workers. As part of their inquiry into immigrant
rights, many turned to biographies on Cesar Chavez and ¡Si, Se Puede/Yes, We Can!: Janitor
Strike in L.A., both texts written in Spanish. The results were persuasive papers that argued for
the humane treatment of immigrants demonstrating the basic denial of human rights being issued
by current federal and state governments.
These discussions opened up a space where we could discuss any topic (Jones, 2006).
Soon the bathrooms were included in discussion, and we questioned why the predominantly
white school down the street does not have smelly restrooms like our school does. Students
questioned why some teachers in our school constantly correct the grammar of the AfricanAmerican students demeaning them in the process, and they created a circle graph illustrating the
racial/ethnic diversity of the required biographical readings as stated in the Social Studies
Georgia Performance Standards. Here they discovered that nearly 70% were white males, only
one African-American woman was included in the list, and absolutely no Latinos or Latinas were
required for study. Outraged as a class, they began supplementing this list with various people
who were African-American, female, Latino/a, Muslim, and Asian. The biliterate cycle
continued because once George Lopez, Cesar Chaves, Gabriela Mistral, Frida Kahlo, Pablo
ENCOURAGING BILITERACY 28
Picasso, Oscar de la Hoya, and Ellen Ochoa were added to the readings, Spanish words appeared
in bilingual biographies, websites, speeches, and posters.
The Teacher/Researcher
Some common threads emerged in my lesson planning, journaling, and overall teaching
strategies during this study. First, the use of dual language books, instead of English-Only or
Spanish-Only, helped those students who felt reluctant to read in either English or Spanish.
Naturally, theses reluctant readers accessed both languages while reading. This helped with
decoding and creating meaning from text. Ana demonstrated this while reading “Braids” by Jane
Medina in Spanish and English, she would stop when she came to a difficult word in Spanish,
glace over at the English version for help with word meaning, return to the Spanish word,
decoding it correctly. Second, bilingual Spanish poetry became an epicenter of biliterate read
alouds, collaboration among monolinguals and bilinguals, and a demonstration of linguistic
capital. I would not have predicted this before this study; however, in reflection there seems to
be a number of reasons this would occur. The text is accessible to everyone in the classroom in
terms of the linguistic code, Spanish and English, as well as the language levels being
appropriate for every child in the classroom in at least in one code of the poem. Due to the
increased access, it now allowed monolingual and bilingual students to collaborate when
presenting a bilingual piece and to present a poem bilingually there needs to be a bilingual
reader, so those readers became a highly demanded commodity during read-aloud times. This
created an atmosphere where African-American students were consistently reading with a
Latino/a, bilingual peer, which differed from the previous segregated friendships and
partnerships that existed in the classroom. Third, without the family stories that connected the
home to classroom, only a few bilingual written artifacts would have emerged. The funds of
ENCOURAGING BILITERACY 29
knowledge displayed through the stories, brought the home to the classroom. It gave the
students a concrete, personal event to describe and illustrate in Spanish and English.
Limitations
Negatively, reoccurring throughout my fieldnotes was the consistent isolation of
biliteracy development to Language Arts or read-aloud times. I experienced what Manyak
(2006) called a “funny compromise” (p. 249). Fostering biliteracy when I could in two
languages and trying to keep up the best I could with the other content areas. Some of the time, I
intentionally planned lessons to develop biliteracy among the students, such as the family stories,
bilingual poetry readings, and dual language picture books. However, during math and inquiry,
the time for science and social studies, biliteracy was a distant thought. Certainly, a bilingual
teacher could bridge these concerns by switching into the other language easily for content area
instruction, but my lack of Spanish proficiency limited those abilities. Even though some
instances of organic biliteracy development occurred during math and inquiry, without my
intention. One of these promising biliteracy developments occurred naturally between friends,
Lora and Leidy. Leidy emigrated with her family from Mexico to Georgia last year. She had
strong Spanish literacy skills, and she is acquiring English at a surprisingly fast pace, but she
often struggles with Science and Social Studies contented related vocabulary. In this instance,
we were discussing Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in Germany and the invasion of Poland, thus
beginning WWII. Lora, also bilingual, had four historical photographs pasted in her War &
Peace scrapbook and began a retelling of the events in Spanish using the photographs to illustrate
and guide her teaching. Certainly, this moment could be duplicated with other students, as well
as extended with bilingual captions for the photographs, but, unfortunately, I moved on to
another task and the opportunity was lost.
ENCOURAGING BILITERACY 30
Even though, I attempted to value and incorporate the languages that my students used at home, I
failed to recognize and include languages other than Spanish and English in the classroom. This
became evident on the last day of school, when…
Implications
Funds of knowledge can be a source to initiate and extend biliteracy development among
bilingual students. This affirms Manyak (2002) conclusion that access to a child’s linguistic
repertoire and Moll’s (1992) theory of Funds of Knowledge will provide a natural avenue for
access into the students’ home and life, in turn providing access to linguistically diverse events.
Dual language books scaffold reading, especially for those who are substantially stronger readers
in one language versus the other. Strategies such as highlighting or circling the unknown words
and searching for the equivalent in the translation support the decoding of the word in hopes to
derive meaning from the text. Bilingual poetry alleviates the frustration experienced by
bilinguals while reading in Spanish or English, as well sparks friendships among monolingual
and bilingual students who previously appeared disconnected from one another. The
teacher/researcher hopes the research gathered here will create a “cross-contextual analysis of
how social relations and institutional practices shape the what, how and why of biliteracy” (Moll
& Dworin, 2001, p. 2). This study further establishes Reyes (2006) statement, “when children
have access to writing systems and to various literacy activities in both their languages, they are
more likely to become biliterate rather than literate only in the dominant language” (p. 289).
ENCOURAGING BILITERACY 31
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ENCOURAGING BILITERACY 35
Table 1
Classroom Demographics
Student
Sex
Carlos
M
Roselyn
F
Blanca
F
Destiny
F
Ana
F
Eliza
F
Tony
M
Alex
M
Gisela
F
Antonio
M
Leidy
F
Christina
F
Luis
M
Lora
F
Dulce
F
Jorge
M
Khryi
M
Alejandra
F
Alejandro
M
Mexican
American
Mexican
American
Mexican
American
African
American
Mexican
American
Mexican
American
Mexican
American
Mexican
American
Mexican
American
Mexican
American
Mexican
American
African
American
Mexican
American
Mexican
American
Mexican
American
Mexican
American
African
American
Mexican
American
Mexican
American
Language Spoken
at Home
Services
Years in
US Schools
Spanish
Heritage Spanish
6
Spanish/English
Heritage Spanish
6
Spanish
6
English
SPED/ESOL
Second Language
Spanish
Spanish
ESOL
6
Spanish
ESOL
6
Spanish/English
Heritage Spanish
6
Spanish/English
EIP
6
Spanish/English
ESOL
6
Spanish/English
Heritage Spanish
5
Spanish
ESOL
1.5
English
EIP
6
Spanish
ESOL
2
Spanish/English
Heritage Spanish
6
Spanish/English
Heritage Spanish
6
Spanish
EIP
6
English
EIP
6
Spanish/English
Heritage Spanish
6
Spanish
Heritage Spanish
6
6
ENCOURAGING BILITERACY 36
Figure 1 Emerging Themes Concept Web
ENCOURAGING BILITERACY 37
Figure 2 Gisela’s Family Story
ENCOURAGING BILITERACY 38
Figure 3: Gisela’s Poem, “My Shadow/Mi Sombra”
ENCOURAGING BILITERACY 39
Figure 4 Gisela’s “Where I’m From” Poem
ENCOURAGING BILITERACY 40
Figure 5
Tony’s “Where I’m From” Poem