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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.

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.

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.

Culturally relevant and sustaining pedagogy is an asset‐based approach to teaching and learning. In this way, students’ identities, languages, and cultures are centered in the learning experience, creating a sense of belonging. The authors observed culturally relevant and sustaining approaches to teaching and learning while visiting schools in New Zealand as part of a three‐week study abroad program. Specifically, the authors observed how teachers in New Zealand centered Maori and Pasifika cultures into daily instruction and learning. Together as teacher educators, an inservice teacher, and a preservice teacher, the authors examine the importance of culturally relevant and sustaining teaching and share their observations of how students’ cultures are honored through writing and arts integration in the classrooms visited in New Zealand. The authors describe how a fifth‐grade teacher applied lessons learned from her visit to New Zealand in her own classroom context in the United States.

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.

Using running records as a lens to facilitate multilingual students’ language and literacy development can help teachers recognize and build on students’ linguistic capital. The authors analyzed 123 running records of Spanish-speaking first graders to begin to identify the types of language-related errors they made when reading. Using an assets orientation, the authors ask teachers to shift from the concept of reading errors to language-related approximations when a student's reading and rereading differ from the text because of linguistic differences. The authors consistently found five types of language-related approximations in the data: teachers’ use of tolds, verbs, contractions, prepositions, and use of the plural -s for nouns. The possible impact on comprehension for each of these language-related approximations is explored and practical instructional recommendations provided, as well as a tool to help teachers analyze language-related approximations.

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.

Developing young students’ language and vocabulary is critical in laying the foundation for learning to read. Asking open‐ended questions, which require more than a one‐word response, is an effective strategy that teachers can use to elicit students’ comments and engage students in extended conversations. However, to facilitate students’ responses, teachers need to not only ask questions but also, equally importantly, provide wait time for students to respond. Students need to think about the question, think about their answer, and think about and select the words that they would like to use to communicate their answer. Typically, this takes longer than the second or less that students are given to respond to a question. Although limited, research on wait time has suggested that students provide more high‐quality responses when they are given wait time. Suggestions for implementing wait time in early childhood classrooms are discussed.

This department explores how teachers can sustain students’ multilingual literacies and reimagine literacy learning across multiple contexts in conversation with researchers, practitioners, and communities.

Supporting young students’ oral language development is vital in ensuring their future success as readers. One important way that early childhood teachers can foster language development is by having extended conversations with students. The authors share research about the importance of rich teacher–student conversations and explain how less verbal students may miss out on conversational opportunities. The authors also explain how to create conditions in the classroom that are supportive of students’ engagement and talk, then give specific strategies for encouraging extended conversations.