Imagining Multimodal and Translanguaging Possibilities for Authentic Cultural Writing Experiences

This article proposes ways to authentically amplify writer’s workshop for emergent bilinguals. Through the study of one bilingual teacher’s mediation in teaching, we examined affordances that translanguaging and transmodal practices have students’ writing processes. In this case study, focused on a sequence associated with well-known Latin American holiday Day Dead, which 3rd grade bilinguals wrote “calaveras,” or literary poems, as part an interdisciplinary language arts social studies lesson. Our work is framed by sociocultural theories mediation, literacy, language. Under multiliteracies pedagogy, observed how teacher negotiate meaning through variety linguistic multimodal resources. our interactional analysis talk, found mediated background knowledge vocabulary process; also identified her included extensive scaffolding she provided disciplinary needed write calaveras. integrating tenets biliteracy, multiliteracies, pedagogies, offers promising example teachers can build culturally-sustaining writers’ support learners’ development practices.