Beyond Static Assessments: Revealing African American and Latina/o Dual Language Kindergartners' Dynamic Biliteracy Skills

• In Event: 34.078 - Roundtable Session 13
  In Roundtable Session: 34.078-17 - Approaches for Teaching and Assessing Bilingual Students

Abstract

This study uses a translanguaging framework to explore the literacy practices of six African American and Latina/o dual language (DL) kindergarteners, and to analyze their performance on end of year assessments. Data include the narration of a wordless picture book in Spanish, miscue analyses of two texts read in Spanish, and end of year district assessments. Our findings suggest that students who came into the DL program with both Spanish and English language skills performed more strongly in Spanish literacy than those with one language at home; however, all students showed gains in their English literacy skills. We propose adopting a translanguaging framework in the assessment of biliteracy skills to better reflect the language skills of minoritized emergent bilinguals.

Authors

• Eurydice B. Bauer, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

• Soria Elizabeth Colomer, Oregon State University

• Joseph Wiemelt, Urbana School District 116