An Interdisciplinary Biliteracy Sequence: Aligning Daily Instruction with the Way Young Bilingual Children Learn

Researchers agree that attention to bilingualism and biliteracy can and should be a goal in all educational settings where young dual language learners are present. The challenge, however, is how to promote biliteracy development while remaining congruent with principles of developmental direction, specifically the idea that children's understandings and skills proceed from concrete to abstract, and from familiar to unfamiliar. This article proposes that bilingualism and biliteracy are achievable goals at an early age in culturally and linguistically diverse settings when educators purposely follow an interdisciplinary sequence of instruction that capitalizes on young children's inclination to play, use their senses, and actively make sense of the world. The Interdisciplinary Biliteracy Sequence consists of three components that include: (1) a direct experience (Phase 1), followed by an opportunity to write about the experience (Phase 2), and concluding with varied reading activities closely related to the initial experience (Phase 3). In all phases, listening and speaking (oracy) activities are present in the form of conversations, songs, formal and informal talk, and intentional language production as children play and acquire language and content.