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‘Many Differing Ladders, Many Ways to Climb...’: Literacy Events in the Bilingual Classroom, Homes, and Community of Three Puerto Rican Kindergartners

Cleveland State University, USAd.volk{at}csuohio.edu]

Martha de Acosta

Milton S. Eisenhower Foundation, USAmdeacosta{at}email.msn.com

In this article, we analyze aspects of the complex literacy lives of three Spanish dominant, mainland Puerto Rican kindergartners who were beginning readers at the time of the study. We investigate literacy as a social and cultural practice in the children’s bilingual classroom, homes, and churches, describing the people who supported their developing literacy, their beliefs about literacy, and the characteristics of literacy events that the children coconstructed with them. Our analysis is based on data collected with ethnographic methods, including participant observation, interviews, and audio recording. At home and in church, the children’s developing literacy was supported by a network of people, many of whom believed that reading was about combining sounds into words and that meaning was inherent in text. Literacy events were often social, collaborative interactions as the families created a syncretic literacy by drawing on the multiple resources in their lives, including their religion, their culture, and their knowledge of two languages as well as their experiences in school. Overall, we found both similarities anddifferences between literacy in school and literacy in the children’s homes and community rather than the matches ormismatches described in the literature.

Key Words: bilingualism • ethnography • home and community • kindergarten • literacy

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