Biliteracy from the Start

Book excerpt: Biliteracy from the Start: Literacy Squared in Action shows bilingual education teachers, administrators, and leadership teams how to plan, implement, monitor, and strengthen biliteracy instruction that builds on students' linguistic resources in two languages, beginning in kindergarten. Escamilla and her team present a holistic biliteracy framework that is at the heart of their action-oriented Literacy Squared school-based project. Teachers learn to develop holistic biliteracy instruction units, lesson plans, and assessments that place Spanish and English side by side. Educators also learn to teach to students' potential within empirically based, scaffolded, biliteracy zones and to support emerging bilinguals' trajectories toward biliteracy. Foreword by Ofelia García. Special Features Key terms and/or guiding questions introduce every chapter. Sample instruction units, lesson plans, student writing in Spanish and English, and paired writing rubrics make chapter content accessible and practical. Empirical evidence of students' reading and writing development in Spanish and English grounds presentation of trajectories toward biliteracy and scaffolded biliteracy zones. Questions for reflection and action at the end of each chapter help biliteracy educators apply key concepts to their local district and school context.