ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on how emergent literacy is promoted in the prekindergarten classroom with young emergent bilingual children. Given the cultural and linguistic diversity of the preschool population in the United States, we consider how translanguaging pedagogy is embedded into the emergent literacy work that preschoolers are asked to do. Using the state of New York as the example, we examine translanguaging and emergent literacy practices in the early childhood classroom. We then discuss how translanguaging theory can transform our understandings of language and literacy with early childhood bilinguals, and the implications it has for play-based instruction, pedagogical practices, and family engagement.
