Finding Emma's "Giraffe": A Case Study of Culturally Responsive Teaching Toward Newly Arrived Young Children

• In Event: Studying Children's Expressions and Knowledge(s)

Abstract

We present a five-month qualitative case study on 3-year-old Emma, who began with “severe delays” in English language development in an urban Head Start program in the United States. The purpose of the study is to document the bilingual literacy practices of Emma, as well as analyze and develop literacy teaching strategies for young language minority students. Using Culturally Relevant/Responsive Pedagogy and sociocultural views of literacy, we analyze Emma’s literacy events during her school journey with her special education itinerant teacher and classroom teacher. The findings point to Emma’s rich literacy repertoires in her heritage languages and shed light on enacting literacy teaching to understand, cultivate, and empower the school lives of newly arrived young children from low-income immigrant families.

Authors

• Ting Yuan, College of Staten Island - CUNY

• Hui Jiang