This article puts forth a multilingual perspective on reading to counter the prevailing monolingualism that dominates reading instruction. First, it brings theories together to develop a cohesive understanding of teaching reading with emergent bilinguals at the center. Second, it illuminates ways educators can design reading instruction, which is…

Reanna, Janet, and Jaimyka are early childhood educators who are recent graduates of the Early Learning and Child Care (ELCC) Diploma program in Aurora College in the Northwest Territories of Canada. They used storytelling and related follow-up activities to teach their Indigenous language, Tlicho, in their early childhood field placements in…

Teachers in English-medium classrooms can support students' translingual composing by inviting students to write using all their language resources. However, students in these contexts often express hesitancy about their ability to spell in languages beyond English. This article describes support strategies teachers can use to scaffold students'…

This teaching tip describes a translanguaging read-aloud protocol. In a translanguaging read-aloud, teachers and students interact with a text (either a bilingual text or a monolingual one) in multiple languages. Teachers plan explanations, questions, and other interactions in multiple languages to amplify and clarify the text. Teachers can adapt…

In this article we identify ways to scaffold content-specific instruction to support your multilingual learners' academic language development. With the definition that academic language compromises of vocabulary, linguistic functions, and syntax, we share ways to integrate three instructional practices across your instruction. These practices…

Music experience during early childhood can promote language and literacy skills, particularly phonological awareness, vocabulary, and turntaking and self-regulation skills useful for communication more broadly. Incorporating music activities into the early childhood classroom can be particularly useful for Dual Language Learners' (DLLs) language…

In this article, I share some of the findings from a community-engaged research project based at Autores Fuertes, a community literacy center, located in urban Philadelphia. Using an engaged, ethnographic case study approach, I conducted observations and interviews at the center, as well as taught translanguaging writing workshops. The findings…

Teachers spend a lot of time finding 'just right' picture books for their students. However, much of what is known about a book's difficulty level was developed with native English speakers. More needs to be developed with the distinctive characteristics of English Learners (ELs). This study reports on the selection of picture books to teach in an…

When working with bilingual readers, teaching for equity means building on students' linguistic strengths. To do so, we must provide intentionally designed holistic literacy instruction that encourages students to use their full literacy and linguistic repertoire. This article describes an asset-oriented approach called "Transliteracy"…

Across the globe, students increasingly use literacies to cross boundaries, locally and globally, virtually and geographically, willingly and involuntarily. They cross these boundaries with versatile linguistic backgrounds that allow them to effectively navigate new school and life worlds. Many students who cross boundaries are students of color…

Children who are learning English as an additional language (EAL) need opportunities to learn English in playful, engaging ways. Nursery rhymes offer an effective forum to explore a wide range of vocabulary and grammar knowledge in a manner that is comprehensible to EAL pupils by using gestures, visuals, and props to support oral language…

The field of reading instruction has long valued storytelling for literacy development, but what kinds of stories are bi/multilingual students exposed to at school? Through the cognitive phenomena of conceptual metonymy and metaphor, this article links language to identity and exposes practices that act to fracture the identities of…

In this Teaching Tips article, we discuss our efforts to create and utilize translanguaging interactive read-aloud videos as part of a community-wide reading program focused on the reading and discussing of a shared book. Offering translanguaging spaces for bilingual readers in area elementary classrooms and the community, these videos were…

Many family literacy programs are designed to teach bi/multilingual families school-based reading strategies, which often downplays families' rich cultural and linguistic resources and accentuates the gap between home and school literacy. We designed Reading Without Words to investigate how wordless picture books could be used to feature the…

Spanish-English cognates (words from ancestrally related languages similar in appearance and meaning) are plentiful in students' reading materials, but few researchers have documented elementary-age bilingual (Spanish-English) students' actual use of cognates. The authors drew from two qualitative research studies to show how bilingual students…