ABSTRACT
In this chapter a father writes about supporting the language and literacy development of his English-dominant children before and after they were enrolled in a two-way Spanish/English bilingual primary school in a large Midwestern city. Both children struggled at first to understand, speak, read, and write in Spanish, but incrementally improved. The older child came to the school with age-level reading ability in English. The younger child struggled to learn to read and write in English as well. Framing the understanding of bilingual development with the work of Cummins and Thomas and Collier, the chapter describes the various ways the family attempted to support the children’s language and literacy development, including a nightly routine of reading and speaking in both English and Spanish at home. The author worked with the younger daughter first on reading English at night, asking the child to read aloud first with pre-primer books, as the school focused almost entirely on Spanish in the earliest grades. The differences in the children’s language development are theorized and recommendations are made.
