Translanguaging through story: Empowering children to use their full language repertoire

Abstract

Translanguaging through story documents the progression of an emerging bilingual preschooler who draws on his full linguistic repertoire to story his experiences with others. Over the course of the school year, Diego progresses in his ability to tell a complete story in both English and Spanish. Repeated engagement in storytelling provides the support needed for Diego to continue and extend ideas in his stories and in his drawing and play. The case shows how opening the space for children to use their full language repertoire enables a child to reciprocally develop named languages like English and Spanish as he improves at academic tasks like telling stories.

“Rapunzel, Rapunzel,Lanza Tu Pelo”: Storytelling in a Transcultural, Translanguaging Dialogic Exchange

“…In Davíd’s house, we throw snow). Diego was a child identified as in need of further support with language in both his heritage language and English (for a report on Diego’s storytelling trajectory, see Flynn et al, 2019). In this instance, we see how opening the space for translanguaging in the classroom supported the language learning of more novice and advanced bilinguals alike as both Mariana and Diego were supported to say more than in previous story circle turns while drawing on shared experiences and shared ways of using language.…”

“…The length and syntactic complexity of her stories were typical for this classroom of students at the beginning and end of the school year. Further, she employed rhetorical strategies common to this group of students and preschool students in another study of story circles (Flynn, 2018a), such as continuing ideas introduced by other students; retelling known stories drawn from television, movies, and literature; repeating and varying a story across more than one story circle; and telling a story first in one’s heritage language and then in English (Flynn, Hoy, Lea, & García, 2019).…”

“…Despite this, the presence of a bilingual teacher who shared the language background of students proved especially important, as only one story was told in Arabic, despite the large presence of Arabic speakers in the story circles. An illustration of the interactional supports provided by Ms. Sofia and Ms. Loretta when working with a bilingual learner in need of additional support with language was described elsewhere (see Flynn et al, 2019).…”

“Want to hear my story?” Developing Latino children’s written narratives through culturally relevant family photographs

“…Teacher and peer interactions also support students' writing as a social process (Bauer, et al, 2017;Kissel, Hansen, Tower, & Lawrence, 2011). Through the ZPD, teachers scaffold students' background knowledge and support their writing development (Donovan, Sekeres, & Kerch, 2020;Flynn, Hoy, Lea, & García, 2021). Social construction of literacy helps children understand about writing for an audience and the value of becoming an author (Bentley & Souto-Manning, 2019;Graves & Hansen, 1983).…”

Dinner at Dinosaurland: Invention, Dialogue, & Solidarity in the Early Childhood Classroom

“…Story circles are a small-group storytelling activity in which children take turns telling their own story each week. Story circles have been used in educational, therapeutic, and community-building settings, and have long been valued for centering the common cause of participants in a dialogic exchange (Flynn, 2016;Flynn et al, 2019). Children in this classroom participated in story circles over the course of the school year, introducing and developing ideas and ways of telling stories.…”