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Educators can take advantage of Latino English learners’ linguistic backgrounds by teaching Spanish–English cognate vocabulary using the Children's Choices picture books. Cognates are words that have identical or nearly identical spellings and meanings in two languages because of their Latin and Greek origins. Students can learn to recognize cognates through morphology and orthography lessons on prefixes, root words, suffixes, and spelling patterns. A cognate database featuring the 2014 and 2015 Children's Choices picture books is presented in this article. The database permits teachers to select their own cognate vocabulary for read‐aloud lessons. Finally, a sample lesson plan for grades 2–4 is discussed as an example for incorporating morphology and orthography instruction to accompany the selected cognate vocabulary words.

The study examines four adolescent multilinguals’ engagement with religion, as well as outcomes of that engagement, in an out‐of‐school book club. The qualitative analysis of participants’ talk in book club meetings, writing responses, and individual interviews revealed that multilinguals tap into their religious knowledge and identities in making sense of secular literature. Engaging with different religious identities in literature discussion inevitably led to conflicts and tensions, but the ways in which the multilinguals dealt with the conflicts varied. In spite of tensions, they gained academic and social competence as learners of English as an additional language (EAL). This investigation contributes to the scarce body of literature around the interconnectedness among religion, identity, and literacy. It also adds to the field by depicting interactions of EAL learners from diverse religious backgrounds, nonbelievers and believers in Hinduism and Islam.

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.

Spanish–English cognates (words from ancestrally related languages similar in appearance and meaning) are plentiful in students’ reading materials, but few researchers have documented elementary‐age bilingual (Spanish–English) students’ actual use of cognates. The authors drew from two qualitative research studies to show how bilingual students can be taught to use cognates to improve their spelling, writing, and reading. The third‐grade teacher's instruction included a cognate definition and examples, identification of the written similarities and differences in Spanish–English cognates, and the completion of cognate lessons related to the students’ English instruction on electricity. The fourth graders received cognate instruction to support their English reading comprehension. After instruction, most of the third graders used cognates for spelling and writing but not for reading, whereas most of the fourth graders used cognates to improve their English reading comprehension. Recommendations are made for how to teach cognates to bilingual students in bilingual, English‐only, and English as a second language classrooms.

The United States is the biggest resettlement country of refugees referred by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees; however, educational resettlement efforts have been unsuccessful in responding to the needs of refugee students, and educational research has thus far presented a deficit‐oriented narrative that ignores the skills and agency of these students. This study challenges such deficit‐oriented presentations by examining how Zein, an adolescent refugee English learner, uses language to construct his identity and position himself as a digital bricoleur (someone creatively using different materials to produce new artifacts). We learn from Zein that classroom tasks with multimodal dimensions can provide spaces for refugee students to negotiate their engagement with classroom tasks to better align them to their interests and identities, make connections between their school‐based and out‐of‐school literacy practices, and practice their agency to produce counternarratives that challenge deficit perspectives of refugee students.

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.

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.

Adolescents who are newcomers in a country and beginning to acquire English as an additional language are often in secondary classrooms with teachers who do not speak their languages. Due to these communication obstacles, there is a great need for teachers to build relationships with their students while setting optimal conditions for literacy development across languages (e.g., English and Spanish) and domains (e.g., oral, written, and digital communication). Guided by tenets of culturally and linguistically responsive pedagogy, the authors describe how two self-identifying monolingual English-speaking teachers formed relationships with high school newcomers during a summer literacy institute. The authors highlight three specific literacy activities that facilitated students’ oral, written, and digital literacy skills in both English and Spanish while also creating a space for caring relationships to form between students and teachers.

The authors present a tool that teachers can use to evaluate the rigor of vocabulary apps for their English learners. The tool asks about effective instructional practices, types of instructional activities, and technology features. The authors used the evaluation tool to examine 53 vocabulary apps for English learners and found overall app quality to be poor. Although most apps included narration (58%), additional features that would benefit students learning English, such as automatic translation to another language or visuals, were largely absent. Finally, the authors present ways that, despite their limitations, vocabulary apps can be used to support English learners’ vocabulary development.

Authors and columns in this department explicitly focus on adult literacy, addressing issues of research, policy, and practice relevant to a wide range of adult learners in different contexts.