Co-constructing Frames of Peer Help during Writers Workshop in a Second-grade Bilingual Class

ABSTRACT

While research has shown that young children draw upon language ideologies to manage the language choices of peers, little is known about how they use language to negotiate academic identities during peer–peer interactions. Integrating theories of language ideologies, social identities, and frames, this article examines how one teacher and two students in a second-grade bilingual class navigated language ideologies in a transitional bilingual program and negotiated frames of linguistic and academic competency during Writers Workshop. The analysis demonstrates the ways in which the teacher and two students interpreted language ideologies and co-constructed academic frames within which students expressed smart identities by helping peers to complete English writing through bilingual exchanges. These frames indexed district-wide conflicting ideologies of cooperation and individualism and English prioritization that position Spanish as a medium of instruction rather than a linguistic goal.

KEYWORDS:

• Emergent bilinguals
• frames
• identities
• language ideologies
• peers

Notes

1. By emergent bilingual children, I refer to children who speak a language other than English at home and have the potential to develop full bilingual proficiency if given sufficient support. Garcia and Kleifgen (2010) developed the term emergent bilingual children as an alternative to the more traditional labels of Limited English Proficient (LEP) or English Language Learners (ELL), which frame these students in relation to their deficit and obscure their multilingual knowledge.

2. Pseudonyms are used for the names of the district, school, teachers, and students.

3. Students were identified as Limited English Proficient through a classification process including parent completion of a home-language survey, English language proficiency test called the Idea, and parent decision to accept or decline services if the child identified as eligible based on the results of the proficiency test.

4. I use the following transcription conventions, noting that punctuation marks are used to communicate the social features of talk instead of the conventional rules of Spanish and English usage:

• (.) micropause

• . falling final intonation contour

• ? rising intonation

• _ stress or emphasis

• :: prolongation of the preceding sound

• (( )) transcriber’s description of events