Family Involvement and Emergent Bilinguals’ Meaning Making Through Multimodal Writing

Including families in school experiences such as parent conferences, class parties, field trips, and as classroom volunteers are traditional ways schools involve families. However, for those families whose home language is other than English, these school functions can be alienating. All families, regardless of their background, have a profound impact on their children's education. Including all families by connecting school experiences and home life is a way to increase literacy skills. Teachers must include families in authentic ways to help build trusting and collaborative relationships which honor linguistic and cultural differences (Johnson, 2014). A way to create positive relationships with emergent bilinguals and their families is to incorporate multimodal writing as a springboard to connect school and home experiences. Multiple modes of expression include such as audio, visual, digital, and linguistic features. These can deepen meaning making (Nunez, 2019). This can be done through digital storytelling, using photography, and creating multimodal storybooks. 

Digital storytelling is an authentic experience emergent bilinguals can use to connect their culture to the classroom to share with others. When teachers use different types of mediums by combining them, this deepens meaning. In digital storytelling, these different mediums can include pictures, icons, voice, cartoons, and text. Using different mediums helps students fit new information into their current funds of knowledge (Johnson, 2014). 

There are many different types of technology tools to choose from when creating a digital storytelling project. VoiceThread, SeeSaw, and Storyboard That are a few free options to choose from the wide variety available. A key consideration to think about when creating a digital storytelling project is to have students use photos from home. This allows the home culture to be represented in the classroom and builds relationships and classroom community. When creating this project, first model the entire process of the digital storybook making to students. Also, allow students to work in pairs to help encourage collaboration and sharing of knowledge with each other during the process. When the project is complete, provide opportunities for family members to view and comment on their child’s digital story. This could be by providing a link and instructions on how to view it. 

 I discussed in my last post how photography encourages translanguaging in emergent bilinguals. Incorporating photography also helps to create a school-home connection. When students are given the opportunity to use photographs as the centerpiece of their writing, they use academic language to explain their experiences (Ghiso, 2013). Allowing students to use photographs of what is important to them in their immediate community encourages them to rely on their funds of knowledge to create and extend their understanding of literacy. 

Storybook making is an authentic way to honor the linguistic and cultural heritage of emergent bilinguals in a school setting. By allowing children to use their voices through multimodal storybook making, it empowers them to share their perspectives and construct meaning through their own learning (Streelasky, 2020). Incorporating the experiences at school or at home into a book, such as playing on the playground, snack time, or peer interactions allows them to create authentic texts about situations that matter to them. When creating these storybooks, use both the home language and English to honor the linguistic knowledge of the student and their home. Allowing these storybooks to be shared with other classmates and their families allows students to be involved in their own learning. The sharing of experiences can expand both the teachers’ and families’ understanding of each other (Nunez, 2019).

            Family involvement in a child’s educational journey is critical. Families whose home language is not English should be included in their child’s school experiences. Not speaking more than one language shouldn’t be a barrier for teachers to involve emergent bilinguals’ families in the classroom community. Connecting school and home life through multimodal writing experiences is a way teachers and schools can build trusting relationships with all families. 

Click the link below to see a poster with some ideas for involving families!

Family Involvement

 

Ghiso, M. P., Martinez-Alvarez, P., & Dernikos, B. P. (2014). Writing from and with community 

knowledge: First-grade emergent bilinguals’ engagements with technology-integrated 

curricula. In R. E. Ferdig & K. E. Pytash (Eds.), Exploring multimodal composition and 

            digital writing (pp. 169-185). IGI Global
Johnson, D. (2014). Reading, Writing and Literacy 2.0: Teaching with Online Texts, Tools and 

Resources. Teachers College Press.
Nunez, I. (2019). “Le hacemos la lucha”: Learning from Madres Mexicanas’ multimodal 

approaches to raising bilingual, biliterate children. Language Arts, 97(1), 7-16.
Streelasky, J. (2020). Creating identity text with young children across culturally and 

linguistically diverse contexts. Journal of Early Childhood Research, 18(3), 243-258. 

https://doi.org/10.1177/147618X19898715