Cooperative bi-literacy: Parents, students, and teachers read to transform

Abstract

Thousands of students in California learn English as a second language in schools that utilize exclusively monolingual - English Only - literacy programs. With such programs students do not have the opportunity to use the knowledge of their first language in order to acquire and master their second language. The project of cooperative bi-literacy described in this article was created to explicitly construct linguistic and cultural bridges between the language spoken at the community - in this case Spanish - and the language of school, English. Through one school year, 2005-06, twenty- nine, fourth-grade students, their parents and two teachers read, deconstructed and analysed bilingual books to supplement the monolingual programs mandated by the school district. The outcomes of this project suggest that when teachers have the power to develop activities that analyse the connections between languages, students increase their academic performance and parents engage actively on the learning process of their children. Most importantly, the participants learn within a context that promotes cultural and linguistic coexistence.

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