Supporting early biliteracy in english‐medium classrooms: Initiatives for family engagement and instructional innovations

Since many bilingual students do not have access to bilingual education, this article illustrates how to collaborate with families and create instructional innovations to support biliteracy for all young bilinguals. The authors implemented a Biliteracy Jumpstart for 6 weeks at the beginning of school year culminating in Family Biliteracy Day with one linguistically diverse Pre-K classroom.

"An English-medium Pre-K teacher implements initiatives to support students' biliteracy through purposeful instruction, innovative curriculum, and family partnerships."

Much research illustrates the benefits of biliteracy (e.g., Babino & Stewart, 2020), the ability to engage in oral and written language across two or more languages. However, many bilingual students are in English-medium classrooms with only one official language of instruction (Office of English Language Acquisition, 2022). Bilingual students might be classified as emergent bilinguals, needing English language support, or they could be simultaneous bilinguals who have been exposed to two or more languages from birth. They may also be heritage speakers who are English dominant, particularly if they are the youngest child, often responding in English to their parents who speak to them in another language (Wright, 2019). Nevertheless, they are all bilingual children. Consequently, we should not approach their emergent literacy from a monolingual perspective (Gort, 2019). This article illustrates how to partner with families and create instructional innovations that support early biliteracy for all bilinguals.