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Educators are expected to take into account students’ linguistic experiences when designing literacy instruction. However, official school records traditionally provide limited information about students’ linguistic histories. This article presents educators with a linguistic survey that can help bridge this gap. The survey is an easy‐to‐use classroom resource through which educators can gather information about their students’ linguistic experiences. Notably, it is based on ideas about and research on bilingualism that are not traditionally discussed in mainstream literacy education. To illustrate the survey's potential for instruction, the article includes a case study of a 10th‐grade student and discusses the implications of the type of information garnered by the survey for literacy pedagogy. As a whole, this article supports educators in making more linguistically informed decisions about literacy instruction.

Emergent bilingual students draw on their linguistic repertoires, moving fluidly between named languages and varieties to meet communicative ends. However, these translanguaging abilities are often not supported in English‐dominant school settings. The author proposes six design principles that educators can use to create instructional strategies that support emergent bilinguals’ translanguaging in the classroom. The author then describes an instructional activity that was created and implemented following the design principles. During this activity, second‐grade emergent bilingual students used tablets to record and share multilingual e‐books. As a result, not only were students’ translanguaging abilities supported, but students were also able to create bilingual written texts and develop strategies to effectively translate for one another.

Multilingual students arrive in classrooms with rich language knowledge and funds of knowledge. Educators must recognize that emergent bilinguals speak multiple languages. They have one unitary language system; their language is bilingualism. Whether in a monolingual classroom setting or a multilingual setting, when working with emergent bilinguals, it is important that all of the students’ linguistic resources are welcomed into the classroom. The author describes how, as a first‐grade dual‐language (Spanish–English) teacher, she used children's literature and translanguaging to support her emergent bilinguals in using all of their linguistic resources to make meaning and build a linguistically sustaining space. The use of the text created a space for the teacher to model translanguaging and for the students to use all of their linguistic resources.

Arabic is the second most common home language of English learners in the United States. Educators seek to design culturally sustaining pedagogy to develop Arabic‐speaking English learners’ English skills while nourishing their heritage language and affirming their culture's values. The authors report on a series of interviews with three Arabic mothers on their perceptions of North American and Arabic award‐winning picture books and their experience of reading with their children. Based on the analysis of the interviews, the authors put forward five culturally sustaining pedagogical possibilities.

In this article, the author invites teachers of children who are bilingual, multilingual, and at promise for bi‐/multilingualism to honor and build on their rich literacy practices. To do so, she challenges ideas and labels that continuously disempower bilingual and multilingual learners. Souto‐Manning establishes the understanding that education is a human, civil, and legal right and briefly reviews the laws determining the education of bilingual children in the United States. In doing so, she explores issues of access and equity in education, then focuses on Ladson‐Billings's concept of culturally relevant teaching and shares examples of culturally relevant teaching in action. These examples come from dual‐language and ESOL classrooms in the United States. She concludes by inviting readers to consider ways to honor and build on the language and literacy practices of bilingual and multilingual learners.

Educators consider guided reading one of the most powerful instructional tools in a reading teacher’s arsenal. Yet, when it comes to emergent bilinguals in both monolingual English and bilingual settings, guided reading is implemented monolingually, or in one language at a time. As the field of reading instruction has moved toward a more asset‐based take on students’ bilingualism, integrating a bilingual approach to guided reading is necessary. The authors offer educators a lens to understand how emergent bilinguals’ resources and bilingualism can be incorporated into guided reading, along with concrete examples that can assist teachers in enacting these practices in their classrooms.

This study introduces parents’ roles in the community Korean–English bilingual family literacy program named Family Storytime. It was offered at the Korean church for 30 minutes during lunch time on Sundays over 3 months. The Korean parents played two major roles: facilitators and participants. As facilitators, the parents advertised the literacy program to other Korean families, set up the room, managed children’s behaviors, and assisted bookplay activities. The Korean parents were active participants who responded to the book, interacted with children, and gave positive feedback to children. The parents’ heritage–language skills and funds of knowledge were valuable resources at the Family Storytime sessions. This study offers an example for how bilingual parents can be involved in family literacy in schools and communities.

The terminology that we use to refer to English learners has shifted over the past two decades, from limited English proficient to English language learner to what is now the preferred term in California and, increasingly, other states: English learner. Yet, what has not changed is how this category continues to limit our thinking about bilingual/multilingual students. English learner is a label that conceals more than it reveals. It emphasizes what these students supposedly do not know instead of highlighting what they do know. As a category, “English learner” constrains our ability to perceive the many strengths that bilingual/multilingual students bring to the classroom—strengths on which we might build to support their language and literacy learning. The author describes how this label distorts our view of bilingual/multilingual students and proposes an alternative perspective that highlights the richness of these students’ linguistic repertoires.

This study reports on Mexican‐origin university students' perceptions of their K–12 literacy experiences and preparation for college‐level reading. Participants were first‐generation college students from Spanish‐dominant homes enrolled in a reading‐intensive course at a four‐year Hispanic‐serving institution. The study was conducted as part of an initiative to assist predominantly low‐income, Latino/Hispanic students enrolled in entry‐level reading‐intensive courses, with the goal of improving postsecondary persistence. Data consisted of individual interviews and participants' language and literacy autobiographies and were analyzed from an ecology‐of‐literacy perspective. Findings included contrasts between home and school literacy forms and practices, differences between high school and college as learning environments, linguistic discrimination experienced at school, and negative ideologies associated with Spanish as a barrier to the development of strong literacy skills in English. Suggestions are offered for improving academic literacy instruction for Mexican‐origin youths.

Drawing connections between traditional notions of academic language and literacy and long-standing systems of marginalization and exclusion, in this article, we invite you to (re)read and (re)story early literacy in the pursuit of linguistic justice.