Opportunities for Making Meaning: Spanish-English Emergent Bi(multi)lingual Children's Authentic Questions Generated During Literature Discussions

• In Event: Moscone Center North Roundtable Session 5
  In Roundtable Session: Vocabulary and Language Development for Emergent Bilinguals

Abstract

Emergent bi(multi)lingual children typically have less access to cognitively demanding content (e.g., Reardon & Galindo, 2009), and deficit approaches to teaching this population are well documented (e.g., Valencia, 2010). Hence, this qualitative study employs translanguaging theory (e.g., García & Wei, 2014) and culturally sustaining pedagogy (Paris & Alim, 2014) to describe the authentic questions that bi(multi)lingual children in a one-way immersion second grade classroom generated across nine literature discussions of three Spanish texts. Provisional and open coding methods were employed to analyze children’s questions and the opportunities for meaning-making the questions yielded. Findings suggest that when emergent bi(multi)lingual children can generate authentic questions and draw on their bi(multi)lingual repertoires, they are capable of engaging in high-level student-led literature discussions.

Author

• Amy Clark, DePaul University