"All About Me" Books: The Power of Choice in a French-English Writing Curriculum

• In Event: Reimagining Common Core Practices: Perspectives on Classroom-Based Multilingual, Multiliteracy, and Multimodal Teaching/Learning

Abstract

Purpose: As students engage in bilingual writing practices, they begin to choose the language(s) in which they will write depending on the context of their writing (Kabuto, 2011; Laman & Van Sluys, 2008). The “All About Me” books were implemented in order to invite the students to write about their lives in French and English and provide the students with significant choice over which language practices to draw upon when writing and also which out-of-school resources to include in each language. This study addresses how students engaged in meaningful writing when the curriculum was expanded to address the bilingual nature of the school and the multilingual backgrounds of the students.

Theoretical Framework: This study draws on New Literacy Studies (NLS), which marked a theoretical shift in perspectives around literacy from a cognitive model where the focus was on an individual’s literacy acquisition to an emphasis on the social and cultural interaction around the uses of literacy (Gee, 2000; Street, 2005). Specifically, NLS explores the ways in which individual identities, social relationships, and institutional structures are sustained and negotiated through what people say and do with literacy (Barton & Hamilton, 1998; Gee, 2012; Street, 1993).

Methodology: The research for this study was conducted at a K-5 French-English bilingual school. Using a qualitative case study design and drawing on ethnographic methods, the data collected included fieldnotes (Emerson, Fretz, & Shaw, 2011) from my observations of the teacher’s writing lessons and from my observations of the students as they participated in writing lessons. Semi-structured interviews were conducted (Glesne, 2011; Kvale & Brinkmann, 2009; Swadener, 2005; Weiss, 1994) with the classroom teachers and with the focal students. Finally, documents were collected (Marshall & Rossman, 2011; Merriam, 1998), including the students’ writing pieces and materials from the curriculum.

Findings: I found that the “All About Me” books provided the children with time to connect their outside worlds to the French and English communicative practices, which were not necessarily part of the curricula’s official agenda. The “All About Me” books enabled the students to draw on their outside worlds, in a different way than their more formal writing pieces and gave the students more freedom with their writing, meaning they were able to freely pull from their multiple worlds and draw on a wide range of their out-of-school resources when composing them. For example, the one student, who was a very strong French speaker and writer, but “struggled” with his English writing, was able to utilize his French writing skills when writing in English, thereby enabling him to complete his writing in English.

Significance: The “All About Me” books were unique because the students were able to draw on their writing practices in French and English. This writing work demonstrated the agency that the students had in terms of using language to communicate certain images of their worlds with each other and connected to their social identities by drawing from those out-of-school resources that aligned with their values and interests.

Author

• Elizabeth A. Morphis, Teachers College, Columbia University