Gillandersjimenez

Reaching for success:
A close-up of Mexican
immigrant parents in the
USA who foster literacy
success for their
kindergarten children
CRI STI NA GI LLANDERS University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,
USA
ROBERT T. J I MNEZ University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,
USA
Abstract The purpose of this study was to examine the home
environment of immigrant Mexican kindergarteners of low
socio-economic status in the USA who display high levels of emergent
literacy when compared to their peers. To examine the home
environments, the study focused on the literacy beliefs and practices
of four families. Findings highlight the role of parental active support
and corresponding literacy practices at home, as promoters of positive
effects of bilingualism and consequently literacy learning. In addition,
the schools use of Spanish facilitated the dynamic of the families
belief in active support of their childrens literacy learning and
subsequent literacy practices.
Keywords bilingual children; emergent literacy; family inuence; kindergarten
children; parent role; Spanish
Introduction
The importance of educational achievement of minority children increases
every year as the population of the USA becomes more linguistically and
culturally diverse. According to the 2000 Census, 17.9% of the population
in the USA speak a language other than English at home. In 1999, 25% of
Latino students in grades K12 spoke mostly Spanish at home and 17%
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Journal of Early
Childhood Literacy
Copyright 2004
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London, Thousand Oaks, CA
and New Delhi
voi 4(3) 243269
DOI: 10.1177/1468798404044513
01ECL4-2 Gillanders (JB/D) 19/10/04 11:39 am Page 243
spoke English and Spanish equally (US Department of Education, 2000).
These demographic characteristics point to the vital need to understand
how English language learners can achieve educational competence. Since
the home environment plays such an important role in school achievement,
the aim of this study is to describe the ways in which Spanish-speaking
families assist children in their process of literacy learning.
The high percentages of high school drop out and low academic achieve-
ment in this particular population is a major concern. In 1999 the drop out
rate for Latinos born outside the USA was 44% (National Center for
Education Statistics, 1999). Thirty-eight percent of Latino students are held
back at least one grade (Garca, 1997). Moreover, Latino children fall
behind English-speaking children in reading achievement (NAEP, 1999).
Various researchers have attempted to explain why Latino students show
such high percentages of failure in reading achievement. These expla-
nations attribute failure to lack of intellectual and linguistic abilities due to
poverty, as well as differences or discontinuities between the school and the
home environment (see for reviews of these theories Delgado-Gaitan,
1994; Ortiz, 1986; Vasquez et al., 1994). Discontinuity theories explain
academic underachievement as a result of a cultural mismatch between the
goals and expectations of the school and those of the students home
environment. However, some students are able to overcome these limi-
tations and are able to succeed in school. Few studies have addressed this
question of why some Latino students are capable of succeeding despite
what many mainstream, middle class, European-Americans consider to be
limitations in socio-economic status, as well as cultural and linguistic
differences (see for example Jimnez et al., 1996; Matute-Bianchi, 1991;
Suarez-Orozco, 1987; Volk, 1997).
This study focuses on the literacy of young Mexican immigrant children
that show higher levels of development when compared to their peers in
school. Previous literature in emergent literacy has emphasized the role of
specic beliefs and practices in families that promote the learning of
literacy (Dickinson and Tabors, 2001; Evans et al., 2000; Frijters et al.,
2000; Gregory, 2001; Purcell-Gates, 1996; Robertson, 2002; Snchal and
LeFevre, 2001). In this study we will describe the family environments of
these children to pinpoint specic beliefs and practices that seem to support
successful attainment of forms of literacy valued by schools in the USA. We
hope such description may generate alternative explanations or extensions
of previous theories of academic success or failure in Mexican immigrant
children.
To understand the origin of the beliefs held by the family members, it is
necessary to consider the sociocultural context in which the familys
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244
practices take place. The sociocultural context denes the goals of develop-
ment and the circumstances in which the childrens development manifests
(Rogoff, 1990). Based on this framework, rst, we analyzed the ongoing
events of literacy that occur in childrens lives while they are interacting
with adults or other children. Second, we analyzed the goals of literacy in
the childs social context in his/her process of appropriation of this cultural
tool. Literacy goals can vary according to the community, as has been shown
by studies of cultural uses of literacy (Anderson and Stokes, 1984; Anderson
et al., 1997; Gregory, 1996; Parke et al., 2002; Schieffelin and Cochran-
Smith, 1984; Volk and De Acosta, 2001). Finally, ideas about literacy cannot
be separated meaningfully from the circumstances in which the literacy
event occurs.
Children learn about literacy through their interactions with adults and
peers in a process of guided participation (Rogoff, 1990). This concept
means that childrens learning of a cultural tool, such as literacy, occurs
through both guidance and participation in culturally valued activities.
These activities are not only conducted by family members for instruc-
tional purposes, but also are routine arrangements (e.g. going to the
grocery store, picking up the mail or reading a recipe) that are part of the
family life. This perspective extends cognitively based views of literacy to
more culturally and societally grounded notions. Literacy is not simply a
personal possession but it also belongs to specic communities and larger
societies. As such, those elements that play a role in societal inequities are
also reected in and constitutive of all the behaviors, ways of thinking,
and linguistic interactions involving literacy (Chouliaraki and Fairclough,
1999).
Applying the concept of guided participation as a mechanism for
learning in the particular domain of literacy, we follow Barton and
Hamiltons (2000: 9) proposition that literacy is best understood as a set
of social practices; these are observable in events which are mediated by
written texts. As a set of social practices literacy is patterned by social insti-
tutions and power relationships, and some literacies are more dominant,
visible and inuential than others (Barton and Hamilton, 2000: 12). As a
result we assume parents will value certain literacies more than others and
will expect their children to learn the kind of literacy they perceive to be
more prestigious, particularly when they employ overt instruction. Finally,
literacy is historically situated (Barton and Hamilton, 2000: 13) and
therefore we need to consider the history of the parents learning of literacy
and the changes that occur in their conceptions of literacy learning as they
interact with a foreign culture. Consequently parents beliefs about literacy
learning will be shaped by their views of which dominant literacies are
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245
worth transmitting to their children and the history of their own learning
of literacy. In addition, these parents beliefs will transform by their
changing conceptions of literacy learning as they come in contact with new
cultural practices and reect on the differences between these and their own
experiences gained in other places, with distinct histories, and embedded
within identiable economic and linguistic systems.
Parental beliefs in literacy learning
Understanding what parents believe about how children learn to read and
write might clarify what they do at home to nurture their childrens literacy
learning. Several researchers have examined how parents differ in their
views of home practices conducive to literacy learning in young children,
depending on what forms of literacy they have been exposed to and the
opportunities for formal education afforded by their socio-economic status
(Fitzgerald et al., 1991; Sonnenschein et al., 1997). Parents from more
privileged backgrounds have been found to value artifacts and events that
are considered natural (e.g. paper, pencils, and reading to the child) and
tend to emphasize an entertainment approach when teaching their children
about literacy, whereas low literacy parents value natural and skill-oriented
artifacts and events (e.g. ashcards, playing school, alphabet blocks, etc.)
and direct instruction (see also Gregory and Williams, 2000).
Goldenberg, Reese and Gallimore (1992) describe how the low-income
Latino parents of kindergarteners in their study tended to focus on repeti-
tion of symbolsound relationships when teaching their children to read.
In a later article Reese and Gallimore (2000) explain this perspective within
a cultural model of literacy development. Parents in these families tend to
disregard their childrens early experiments with text as not real reading.
They also believe that reading is learned through formal instruction.
Reading aloud is not a common practice, and in those families where this
practice does occur before the children begin school, it is considered a
means for imparting a moral message, not for learning to read. This cultural
model arises from the parents experiences with learning to read in their
home countries, and although it is ubiquitous, it is not unchangeable. In
effect, although reading aloud to their children was not part of the parents
cultural model, once teachers assigned it in an ongoing homework
program, parents integrated it within their overall set of literacy beliefs and
practices.
In addition to parents beliefs about literacy learning, parents ideas about
the importance of bilingualism can also have implications for childrens
literacy learning, especially among immigrants who speak a language other
246
than English. Knowing two languages has been found to have a positive
inuence on metalinguistic awareness (that is, the ability to reect on and
manipulate parts of language independent of meaning), a prerequisite for
learning to read (Bialystok, 1997; Bruck and Genesee, 1995; Durgunoglu
and ney, 2000; Gncz and Kodzopeljic, 1991; Yelland et al., 1993).
Furthermore, parents desire to raise their children as bilinguals might
motivate them to practice the native language in a variety of ways that in
turn are precursors of literacy. For example, these parents might engage in
practices such as demanding that their children speak the native language,
reading, singing, and teaching rhymes with the intention of developing
cultural identity in their children, and with the result of promoting literacy
development (Gillanders, 1996).
Family practices for literacy learning
According to their beliefs, parents conduct activities in the home that have
consequences for the development of childrens literacy. Some family
literacy practices have been underscored as precursors for young childrens
literacy and school achievement skills. Shared book reading is a practice that
has been frequently linked with childrens literacy development (for a
review see Bus et al., 1995; Scarborough and Dobrich, 1994). In low-
income Latino families, shared book reading is not a common practice
(Goldenberg et al., 1992), but the amount of storybook reading in these
families increases substantially once the children begin school (Reese and
Gallimore, 2000).
In addition to shared book reading, parents engage in other practices that
have been linked to early school literacy learning. Some of these practices
are the use of extended discourse (such as explanations, narratives or
pretend talk) (Dickinson and Tabors, 2001); the level of vocabulary that
mothers use with their children (Dickinson and Tabors, 2001); activities
involving letters and words (Snchal and LeFevre, 2001; Evans et al.,
2000); and teaching of rhymes and nursery rhymes (Maclean et al., 1987).
None of these studies involved bilingual families, therefore it is less known
what kinds of literacy events occur in these families and how these events
might affect later literacy development.
The purpose of this study was to examine the home environments of
those children that display high levels of emergent literacy in school despite
coming from culturally different backgrounds. Traditionally, researchers
have emphasized the reasons for failure of Latino students. In this study we
attempt to understand the reasons for their success.
In brief, our research questions in this article are:
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1. What are the family beliefs about literacy development and instruction?
2. What are their attitudes toward bilingualism?
3. What kinds of practices does the family engage in that could be
conducive to literacy learning in a bilingual context?
Since the focus of this study was on the beliefs that underlie these
families literacy practices, ethnographic techniques were used. Ethno-
graphic strategies allow the researcher to observe instructional events in the
homes as a socioculturally relevant environment.
Method
Setting
Forest View (a ctitious name) is a mid-western city of about 123,000
inhabitants and a suburb of Chicago. The Latino population has become the
largest minority in the city (at the time of the study 22.6%). Most of them
are of Mexican origin, although some are from Puerto Rico, Cuba, and
other Spanish speaking countries.
The Forest View School District serves almost 10,000 students of which
approximately 3000 receive bilingual education. The bilingual program is
transitional, that is, the children receive instruction in their native language
from kindergarten up to third grade and then they are transitioned to
English-only classrooms. Most of the students are Spanish speaking,
although there are some who speak other languages such as Lao, Chinese,
and Polish. To be placed in bilingual education, children entering the school
system are tested using LAS (Language Assessment Scales) (Duncan and De
Avila, 1998). In this test children are asked to follow directions, repeat
sentences and retell stories in English. If they score less than four on the
English prociency test, they receive bilingual education; otherwise they
attend an English-only classroom.
The school attended by the target children served 725 children. Of those,
380 qualify for the free-lunch federal program. Eighty-ve percent of the
children in the school were of Latino origin and there were 16 bilingual
classrooms including six of the kindergarten classrooms.
Selection of the participants
The target children were kindergarteners from low-income Mexican immi-
grant families and with no formal pre-school experience. This last criterion
was selected in order to minimize the inuence of schooling before entrance
to kindergarten and maximize the role of parents in preparing the children
for school. The teachers from two bilingual kindergarten classes in the same
248
school were asked to identify Latino children of low socio-economic back-
ground that were considered above their peers in levels of emergent literacy.
All the children selected were eligible for the free-lunch program.
Because the school district had a popular pre-school program the pool
of students that had not previously attended formal pre-school was rather
small. From this group the kindergarten teachers chose those children that
in their view were the best of the group that had not attended pre-school.
The selected children were assessed at the beginning and end of the
school year, using several literacy measures as follows:
1
Conceptos del texto
impreso (Clay et al., 1996); samples of writing examined using Ferreiro
and Teberoskys (1979) developmental framework; comprehension of a
story read aloud; identication of rhymes, and matching of sounds of rst
syllables which were created for this study. Six children were recommended
by the kindergarten teachers and were assessed. Four children met the
criteria that included:
A kindergartener with high levels of literacy development within
his/her classroom.
Immigrant parents from a Latin American country. All parents of the
selected children were born in Mexico.
Parents with low levels of education, that is, a maximum of a high
school education equivalent.
For reasons of space limitations in the present article we refer to two of
the families selected in the study.
Data collection
Interviews To obtain an inside perspective of the participants beliefs and
values a general interview guide approach (Patton, 1991) as well as
informal interviews were conducted. During the months of June 1999 to
June 2000 the rst author conducted from six to seven interviews per
family. Each interview lasted from 60 to 90 minutes. In total the rst author
made 27 visits amounting to 30 hours of interviews and observations.
All interviews were conducted in Spanish. The areas especially considered
in the interviews were parents beliefs in literacy learning and instruction,
attitudes toward bilingualism, and literacy practices. As a resource to help
the parents and children to talk aloud about their practices and beliefs, the
families were asked to audiotape events in which parents or siblings and
the child participated, that were viewed by them as leading to literacy
learning. These tapes were later listened to by the parents and the researcher.
The researcher asked the parent to explain the activity taken place in the
tape. This explanation was transcribed and later analyzed.
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In addition, the target childrens teachers were interviewed at the begin-
ning, in the middle, and at the end of the school year to determine the
childrens literacy development in school and the overall view of the class-
room literacy activities. During the visits information was also obtained
from the participants in situ (Patton, 1991), through informal interviews
or conversations, often in the presence of the target child.
Participant observations On each of the visits the rst author was able
to observe the physical setting and the informal interaction between parents
and children, since usually the target children sat with the adults during
the interview. On a few occasions the parents were asked to perform
everyday activities they had described in the interviews. These activities
included doing homework with the children, going to the grocery store,
or reading a book aloud with a sibling.
Documents Parents were also asked to accumulate samples of the work
done by the children (e.g. writing in notebooks and pieces of paper) during
a three-week period. On a subsequent visit they explained what might have
been the purpose or motivation behind each particular item.
Analysis
The analysis of the data began after the rst interview in the eld. The depth
of the analysis ranged from reading over the previous interview and formu-
lating new questions to developing a focused coding. In focused coding the
researcher creates categories rather than label topics. These categories are
used in large amounts of data to help dene and explicate each category
(Charmaz, 1983).
In the initial analysis the rst author organized the interview transcripts
in accordance with the initial questions of the study. The analysis was based
on a data record rather than on the original raw data (Graue and Walsh,
1998). Subsequently, a set of codes was developed with the major themes
of parents beliefs about literacy learning and bilingualism, and literacy
practices (e.g. kindergarten readiness, ideas about literacy learning, and
daily routine). A limited set of codes were chosen, and a summary of each
was written that claried and classied the data that it covered, a process
that has been called focused coding (Charmaz, 1983). Examples of coding
categories are: responsibility for literacy learning, support in literacy
learning, and attitudes toward bilingualism. During this process Tables 5
and 6 were developed in which we categorized the different activities the
parents engaged in when supporting literacy development. To illustrate
specic teaching events that commonly occurred within the families,
250
vignettes were written using data from the interviews, participant obser-
vations and documents. The vignettes are not directly taken from eld notes
but rather are elaborations in which the researcher tries to convey to the
reader his/her interpretive stance (Graue and Walsh, 1998).
Parts of the analysis were translated into Spanish and presented to the
parents as a way of verifying beliefs and practices. A few corrections were
made with regard to aspects of their family history.
The children
Mara Isabel Ramrez Mara Isabel was assessed at the end of her kinder-
garten year in June of 1999 (see Tables 1 and 2 for the initial and nal
assessment scores of the two children). In her initial assessment her score
in the test of Conceptos del texto impreso (Clay et al., 1996) lay on the
fth stanine. Since normalized scores for kindergarteners were not avail-
able, her score was compared to those from a group of rst graders from
Arizona, Texas, and Illinois tested in the fall (see Clay et al., 1996). She was
capable of writing words including letters that represented phonemes as
well as syllables, which is an advanced level in the progression towards
alphabetic writing (Ferreiro and Teberosky, 1979). She was also able to
match the sound of the rst syllable of a word when shown a picture of
another word with the same sound, and retell a story recalling the main
events in sequence.
According to her classroom teacher Mara Isabel began her rst grade
showing an advanced level of decoding skills compared to her classmates.
As a result she was placed in the advanced reading group. However, during
the winter months she had shown little progress in her reading uency. At
the end of the year she was described as an above average student. The
reading teacher indicated that she had improved greatly in her reading
aloud and uency.
In her nal assessment she obtained a score of 23 in the test of Concep-
tos del texto impreso, which lies on the 9th stanine. She was able to
identify three out of four words that did not rhyme and was able to write
words in the conventional form. She could retell a storys main events in
sequence and identify the sounds of rst syllables.
Eutimio Luzardo Eutimio obtained the lowest score of the four children
included in the study in the test Conceptos del texto impreso. His score
of nine places him in the fourth stanine in the normalized scores mentioned
above (Clay et al., 1996). He was able to identify one word that rhymed
but was incapable of matching the rst syllable of a word to a picture. In
writing, he used the syllabic hypothesis, that is, each letter represented a
251
syllable, although the letters he used did not have the conventional sound.
After reading aloud a story to him, he recalled only details but no main
events. Although his performance in these tests was not very high, he was
included in the study because of his awareness that each letter represented
a syllable. Children who achieve this stage are advanced in their literacy
knowledge (see Ferreiro and Teberosky, 1979).
Once he began school and gained condence in his abilities, Eutimio
rapidly became an above average student according to his teacher. At that
point he was able to read simple sentences in predictable books. In writing
he was using letters conventionally representing phonemes as well as
syllables. He seemed to be very interested in learning to read and he was
able to understand stories that were read aloud.
At the end of the school year he was reading simple texts and was able
to understand their meaning. In his writing he included vowels and con-
sonants and wrote some words with conventional spelling. The teacher
continued to consider Eutimio an above average student at the culmination
of his kindergarten year.
In the nal assessment he obtained a score of 16 in the test Conceptos
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Table 1 Initial assessment
Name Date of Concepts Identication Writing Matching Comprehension LAS
Assessment about of Rhymes Samples First (Max: 3)
Print (Max: 4) (Max: 5) Syllable
(Max: 25) (max: 2)
Mara Isabel 6/1999 11 0 4 2 3 English:
0/1
Spanish:
63/3
Eutimio 9/1999 9 1 3 0 2 English:
49/1
Spanish:
77.5/3
Table 2 Final assessment
Name Date of Concepts Identication Writing Matching Comprehension LAS
Assessment about of Rhymes Samples First (Max: 3)
Print (Max: 4) (Max: 5) Syllable
(Max: 25) (Max: 2)
Mara Isabel 6/2000 23 3 5 2 3 English:
10/1
Eutimio 9/2000 16 4 5 2 3 English:
75.5/3
del texto impreso which placed him in the eighth stanine in comparison
with rst graders tested in the fall (Clay et al., 1996). He was able to identify
all the words that did not rhyme. He could write words conventionally and
recall main events and details from a story. Finally, he easily identied the
sounds of the rst syllables.
Family portraits
All the parents were born in Mexico. In Tables 3 and 4 the childrens ages and
the years of residence in the USA shown are at the beginning of the study.
The Ramrez family
First author met the Ramrez family in May 1999 when Mara Isabel was
nishing her kindergarten year. The rst interview was held in June. Mrs
Amelia Ramrez was pregnant with her third child.
Mr and Mrs Ramrez are from Uriangato in the state of Guanajuato, a
city of about 59,000 inhabitants. In Mexico Mr Ramrez worked as a
salesman and installer of construction materials. Mrs Ramrez stayed at
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Table 3 Family portraits
Family Place of Birth Children Focal Child
Ramrez, Amelia & Uriangato, Guanajuato Mara Isabel (6y) Mara Isabel (6y)
Mario (Urban) Jos (5y)
Alma (born during the
study)
Luzardo, Rosario & Tepehuanes, Durango Eutimio (5y) Eutimio (5y)
Juan (Rural)
Table 4 Parents educational background, years of residence in USA, and language used
at home
Family Educational Level Years of Residence Language used
in USA at Home
Ramrez, Amelia Middle School and 2 Spanish
Comercial*
Ramrez, Mario Completed elementary 3 Spanish
Luzardo, Rosario Completed elementary 7 Spanish
Luzardo, Juan 4 years elementary 7 Spanish
Note: *High school equivalent.
home with the children. Two years before the study began they moved to
Forest View where they had some relatives and where they believed he
could nd a job in a factory. At the time of the study, Mr Ramrez was
working in a factory that made batteries. The Ramrezes were considering
returning to Mexico some day.
Mrs Ramrez stayed at home taking care of the household. She did most
of the school-related activities with the children because Mr Ramrez no
tiene paciencia (lacks patience). Most of the time the children were present
during the interviews and participated in the conversation. Mara Isabel had
not attended pre-school because when she was four years old they were
living in a school district that did not offer this kind of program.
At the time of the study Amelias efforts to learn English had been limited
to listening some tapes of the program Ingls sin barreras (English without
barriers). Mario considered himself more competent in English than
Amelia since he had to use some English in his work.
The Luzardo family
The rst author began her interviews with the Luzardos in October. The
Luzardos came to this country as newlyweds seven years ago. Mr and Mrs
Luzardo came from a small town that they called a ranchero two and a
half hours from Tepehuanes. In Mexico Mr Luzardo worked in agriculture,
while Mrs Luzardo took care of the household. Some of Mr Luzardos
relatives were already living in Forest View, so they decided to try their luck
in the USA. At the time of the study, Mr Luzardo worked in a factory that
made cardboard. Mrs Luzardo stayed at home with Eutimio.
Mrs Luzardo did not drive so she spent most of her time at home with
Eutimio. In the interviews she said that she wanted to take classes to
improve her English, but had been unable to because of lack of trans-
portation and because Eutimio, until recently, was not ready to stay with an
adult who was not one of his parents. According to his mother, Eutimio
did not attend pre-school for the same reason. Like the Ramrez family, the
Luzardos have considered the possibility of returning to Mexico some day.
Learning about literacy at home
In this section we will describe the families attitudes toward bilingualism
as well as their general beliefs about how children learn literacy. These
beliefs are embedded in the following description of each familys literacy
events. Tables 5 and 6 summarize the different events in which the children
learnt about literacy at home. According to Rogoff (1990) the process of
guided participation occurs not only in formal didactic activities in which
254
parents explicitly have an educational goal in mind, but also in activities
that are not intended to teach but rather are everyday routines in which
every family engages.
In Table 5 we have included the formal activities carried out explicitly
and intentionally by the parents with the purpose of teaching their children
to read and write. The parents were eager to share these activities so the
researcher was readily able to obtain information about them.
In Table 6 we described the informal activities. In these events, usually
child-initiated, there is no explicit purpose for teaching children about
literacy; rather they are the result of the childrens active participation in
their own learning. The parents role in these activities is to provide the
materials and occasions so that these events can occur. For example, when
Rosario asked Eutimio to pick up the mail, he liked to read the advertise-
ments for toys. Obtaining data about these events was more difcult for the
researchers than the formal activities. As formal activities have a specic
purpose in mind, parents made a special effort to perform them so they
were quite conscious about them. On the other hand, informal activities
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Table 5 Family support in learning literacy: formal teaching activities
Focus Ramrez Luzardo
Letters Teaches letters of childs name Points to letters of the alphabet in
Spanish
Encourages solving letter soups in
English
Reading Encourages reading instructions in Reads instructions and words in
homework English workbooks
Reads aloud books in Spanish Seldom reads aloud books in
brought from school Spanish
Encourages putting syllables together
Writing Asks child to make planas of name Asks child to write names of family
members
Dictates words and phrases Asks child to write words in English
workbooks
Instructs child not to join words Asks child to write numbers
together
Reads words slowly so child can write
words
Asks child to write numbers from 1 to
200
are part of the daily family routine in which the goal is to take care of the
household needs. The fact that formal activities are more readily reported
than informal activities reects a particular way of viewing learning. In lieu
of taking for granted that less informal activities did occur, we assume that
these activities were less accessible to us as researchers because they were
considered by the parents not worthwhile reporting as literacy learning
practices.
The Ramrez family
Amelia believed that it was important for her children to become bilingual.
She considered that knowing English and Spanish provided better job
opportunities. To achieve her goal Amelia and her husband spoke to the
children in Spanish at home. She disagreed with other Mexican families,
who stop speaking Spanish so that their children learn English.
Vignette 1: doing homework It is Friday afternoon and Amelia calls
Mara Isabel (6) and Jos (5) to do their homework. In the living room
Mara Isabel sits around the coffee table on the oor. Amelia sits with her
baby on the table, where she can easily see Joss and Mara Isabels
homework. She begins helping Jos, while Mara Isabel reads the instruc-
tions for her homework. Jos sets his homework sheet on the table and
opens a notebook in which he has written beforehand several syllables in
the order of the vowels, that is, ma-me-mi-mo-mu; sa-se-si-so-su, and
256
Table 6 Family support in learning literacy: informal teaching activities
Focus Ramrez Luzardo
Letters Chants the alphabet while jumping Plays school, writing letters and
rope in Spanish coloring
Reading Invents stories orally in Spanish Picks up mail and reads ads in
before going to bed English
Reads sales ads in stores in Spanish
and English
Reads prices in stores in Spanish
and English
Writing Makes list of ingredients for cake in Writes letters in Spanish to family
Spanish members
Copies words from ads in English
Plays school and writes instructions
to friends in Spanish
others. These syllables have been dictated to him by Amelia previously.
Amelia explains that she dictates syllables and words to her children in
order to help them learn to read and write. She also says that this was the
same way she taught Mara Isabel when she was Joss age. Joss homework
is shown in Figure 1.
Homework was an important part of the formal activities that the
Ramrez family performed. Amelia used the homework as an indication of
what was necessary for the children to learn. This was not only in terms of
the content of the curriculum but also in terms of the childrens perform-
ance. For example, Amelia recalls how Mara Isabel had to write the
numbers from 1 to 100 in her homework. She noticed that Mara Isabel
could do this task easily, so she decided to teach her how to write the
257
Amelia: A ver Jos. (She points to the
syllables on the sheet of paper. The task of
the homework is to read words that have
the syllables ta-te-ti-to-tu and some other
words that they have studied previously.
The text that Amelia is pointing to says ta-
te-to-tu-ti.)
Jos: Ta-te-ti-to-tu. (Amelia points to text
again) Ta-te-to-tu-ti.
(Amelia points to rst word in the page:
Tapa)
Jos: Taba.
Amelia: Esta slaba cul es?
Jos: Ta.
Amelia: Cmo dice aqu?
Jos: Ta
Amelia: Cul es esta slaba? (Points to the
syllable pa in Joss notebook)
Jos: Ta . . . pa.
Amelia: Jntala.
Jos: Tapa.
Amelia: Lets see, Jos. (She points to the
syllables on the sheet of paper. The task of
the homework is to read words that have
the syllables ta-te-ti-to-tu and some other
words that they have studied previously.
The text that Amelia is pointing to says ta-
te-to-tu-ti.)
Jos: Ta-te-ti-to-tu. (Amelia points to text
again) Ta-te-to-tu-ti.
(Amelia points to rst word in the page:
Tapa)
Jos: Taba.
Amelia: What syllable is this?
Jos: Ta.
Amelia: What does it say here?
Jos: Ta
Amelia: What syllable is this? (Points to the
syllable pa in Joss notebook)
Jos: Ta . . . pa.
Amelia: Put it together.
Jos: Tapa.
ta te to tu ti
tapa toma tusa tio tapete
sopa paleta piloto elote pastel
pesa mata suma usas solo
Tito toma el pastel.
Original dialogue in Spanish Translation in English
Figure 1 Sample of Joss homework
numbers from 100 to 200. Although this was not required by the school,
she took the initiative to teach her more than what was required.
Amelia believed that her children, although they had different styles of
learning, learned better when they received direct instruction. As she
described it, cuando me siento con ella aprende mejor (when I sit with
her she learns better). She also had the idea that children learn more if they
have many opportunities to practice.
Most of the activities Amelia set for her children in the initial phases of
reading emphasized decoding syllables. She taught initially the names of
the letters in Mara Isabels name. Because the teacher used a syllabic
approach, Amelias instruction was congruent with her schooling and with
what was being done in the childrens school. As seen in the previous
vignette, she asked Jos to write in a notebook the syllables they had been
learning in school and then she used the notebook as a reference for over-
seeing his homework.
What was Jos learning from this exercise? As pointed out by Clay (1979)
beginning readers must monitor simultaneously many cues such as
meaning, sentence structure, order of letter and words, size, visual cues,
and rst and last letters cues in order to learn to read effectively. In reading
the syllables in the homework, Jos was learning to use rst letter and visual
cues. He also had to pay attention to order cues so he could read the letters
in the left to right direction. In addition, in the vignette Amelia was helping
Jos to learn how to blend syllables. This process probably would have been
easier for Jos if Amelia had pointed out that he also needed to attend to
the meaning of the word. In an exchange later on this particular interaction
(not included in the previous transcript), Jos tried to read the word elote
(corn). Once he recognized the familiar word he was able to blend the
syllables without any effort.
Although Amelia seemed to place great emphasis on grapho-phonic
clues, that is, clues from letters and sounds, especially in the initial phases
of reading, she also considered it important for her children to understand
what they were reading once they were able to decode.
En la lectura es lo que le digo, le estoy enseando a que ella vaya captando lo
que va leyendo y no nada ms lea lo que est leyendo en las slabas, sino que
vaya captando lo que ella est leyendo, porque de eso se trata.
In reading its what I am telling her, I am teaching her to grasp what she is
reading and not only reading the syllables, but rather grasp the meaning of what
she is reading, because that is what it is all about.
In writing, she began teaching Mara Isabel to write her name using planas.
Planas is a common practice for teaching literacy in Latin American
258
countries. A letter, word or phrase is written on a page and the child has to
copy the letter, word or phrase numerous times until the end of the page.
She also frequently asked Mara Isabel to write words or phrases she
dictated. Amelia dictated different kinds of texts. She once asked Mara
Isabel to write the ingredients they needed to bake a cake. Other times she
would ask her to write sentences with words that were familiar to Mara
Isabel because they had been reading them in school.
In terms of informal activities, Mara Isabel and Jos frequently engaged
in language games that were good exercises for phonological awareness
(Lundberg et al., 1988; Torgesen et al., 1992), that is, the explicit know-
ledge of the phonological structure of the language. For example, they often
skipped with a rope, chanting words beginning with the letters of the
alphabet.
Their father Mario would sometimes ask them to invent stories orally
before going to bed. Amelia recalls how, initially, the stories were told
mostly by Mario, but soon after the children began to create their own.
By the end of the school year, Amelia began babysitting some neighbor-
hood children who would come to her house some afternoons during the
week. During these visits the children played school, and since Mara Isabel
was the eldest, she was the teacher. Amelia amusedly reported how Mara
Isabel repeated the words of the teacher and copied some of the exercises
she had done in school that day.
As for reading aloud, Amelia explained that initially they did not often
read storybooks aloud because they did not have many books in Spanish or
English. However, in the middle of Mara Isabels rst grade year, the teacher
informed Amelia that she did not seem to be making much progress in
reading. Amelia responded that she thought that Mara Isabel did not
practice reading frequently enough and asked the teacher to send books
home in Spanish so they could read more often. Since then they read aloud
more frequently.
The Luzardo family
Like Amelia, Rosario believed in raising her son Eutimio as a bilingual.
Being bilingual allowed Eutimio ms oportunidades de empleo, de estudio,
de superarse (more job and study opportunities, to get ahead). She was
certain she wanted Eutimio to learn English but she also wanted to make
sure he learned Spanish correcto (correctly).
Vignette 2: workbooks Rosario and Eutimio sit in the living room.
Eutimio is bored and Rosario, looking for some thing to amuse him, brings
a workbook. They both look at the book and choose a page. The task is a
259
letter soup. Figure 2 is an example of a letter soup. The task is to nd the
words. Eutimio with pencil in hand looks for the words and circles them.
Rosario used workbooks as a way of ensuring that Eutimio liked books
and also as a means of entertaining him. Initially she did most of the
coloring and nding answers to the puzzles, but eventually Eutimio began
260
Rosario: Empieza a buscar sta. (Referring
to word in letter soup)
Eutimio: Pero sta no est, no est.
Rosario: Busca la ese.
Eutimio: Aqu.
Rosario: Pero que estn todos en lnea.
Eutimio: Tu la ves? Yo no la veo.
Rosario: A ver busca una ese. Mira. (Points
to letter). Ahora busca sta (pointing to
another word).
Eutimio: Esta es la pi, la pi, pi, pi.
Rosario: Pero cual empieza por la pi? Tu la
buscas. Ya la encontraste? Conoces las
letras?
Eutimio: Jota, u, eme, pe.
Rosario: Jump. OK, busca otra.
Rosario: A ver dime las letras.
Eutimio: Ese,u, ene, wow, esta le gan!
Rosario: Sunny.
Eutimio: Sunny Delight! Sunny Delight!
(Laughs. Looks for another word).
Rosario: Begin looking for this one.
(Referring to word in letter soup)
Eutimio: But this one isnt here, isnt here.
Rosario: Look for the s.
Eutimio: Here.
Rosario: But they all have to be in a line.
Eutimio: Do you see it? I dont see it.
Rosario: Lets see, look for an s. Look.
(Points to letter). Now look for this one
(pointing to another word).
Eutimio: This is the p, p, p (names the
letters in English).
Rosario: But which one begins with the p
(name of letter in English)? You look for it.
Did you nd it? Do you know the letters?
Eutimio: J, u, m, p. (In Spanish)
Rosario: Jump. OK look for another one.
Rosario: Lets see, tell me the letters.
Eutimio: S, u, n (in Spanish) wow, I won
this one!!
Rosario: Sunny.
Eutimio: Sunny Delight! Sunny Delight!
(Laughs. Looks for another word)
P E N C I L
A R D E S K
P A N L P N
E S G L U E
R E A D C S
PAPER GLUE
PAN PEN
READ PENCIL
CELL DESK
CUP ERASE
Spanish Original Version English Translation
Figure 2 Example of letter soup
doing it without her help. At the time of the interviews, Eutimio and
Rosario had already completed around 10 workbooks. In the vignette
Rosario and Eutimio are solving a letter soup game, which was a frequent
activity. This game requires that the child nd words embedded within a
block of seemingly random rows and columns of continuous letters.
What was Eutimio learning from this activity? First, in order to nd the
word, Eutimio had to assume that the word was written in a specic order.
In fact, Rosario reminds him that the words are en lnea (in a line). Second,
he was learning that words are meaningful and that words like sunny are
found both in books and on the bottles of his favorite juice Sunny Delight.
Third, when Rosario asked him to name the letters he found, he was
learning that letters have specic names. It is interesting that in these
examples, both Eutimio and Rosario chose to name the letters in English
and Spanish. This is common in the circumstances of living in a bilingual
context. Rosario and Eutimio go back and forth between English and
Spanish. The lesson for Eutimio is that both languages share a similar alpha-
betic system.
Although there was not much discussion about the meaning of the words
in the exercise, Rosario tried to read the words in English once Eutimio had
found them in the puzzle. By the end of the study, Rosario was encourag-
ing Eutimio to read the workbook instructions in English by himself.
It could be considered contradictory that given Rosarios belief in
teaching a correct Spanish, she would use both languages at the same time.
This activity was congruent with her belief, though, of giving Eutimio
activities that were entertaining and educational. In addition, she did not
have a choice because English workbooks were the only resources available.
This example also shows that the process of bilingual literacy acquisition
in family settings does not always occur in a sequential fashion such as
schools often try to implement in a graded curriculum. One language does
not always precede the other; rather in many circumstances both languages
are used at the same time.
On some occasions Eutimio liked to write the names of the family
members. Rosario dictated the name of the letters and he wrote them.
When Eutimio did not remember how to write a letter, Rosario provided
a piece of paper on which she had written the alphabet. This was used as
a reference when Eutimio was engaged in writing.
Most of the activities in which Rosario and Eutimio engaged were more
relaxed than those in other families. Rosario was able to describe more
informal activities as compared to the rest of the families. Although it seems
as though more informal activities took place in her household, it may have
been the case that she simply included more activities in which she was
261
not explicitly teaching reading and writing. Eutimio frequently asked his
mother to read signs in stores that announced sales. Rosario often asked
him the prices of the products he wanted to buy. All the signs in the store
were in English. In addition, Rosario indicated that Eutimio often se pone
a estudiar (begins to study) as a form of entertainment. He also enjoyed
writing letters to family members in Mexico.
As in the other families, reading aloud was infrequent. Rosario reported
that they had few picture books in Spanish and she read materials in English
only with a lot of effort. Not until the kindergarten teacher began sending
books in Spanish in the middle of the school year did reading aloud become
more frequent.
Discussion
Despite being poor, speaking a minority language, and belonging to a
foreign culture, the children in this study were able to perform well in
school and develop their literacy skills at levels comparable to or better than
those of their classmates. Challenging the decit theory, which would have
predicted that these children were doomed to failure because of poverty
and therefore lacking the experience necessary for school, these families
provided some of the forms of support valued by the school. Our ndings
also suggest a more complex picture than the one proposed by the discon-
tinuity theory. Although there were some continuities between the school
and home (that is, the teacher spoke Spanish and used the syllabic method
for teaching reading) there were also discontinuities. An example of a
discontinuity is that teachers used reading aloud as an instructional strategy
while the families rarely did so, at least until the teachers encouraged them
to do it. This means that some families do not react passively to the differ-
ences between home and school but rather are willing to adapt to the new
circumstances of their childrens schooling and add new practices to their
repertoire if this means helping their children succeed in school (Reese and
Gallimore, 2000). However, these new adaptations occur within the
parents original cultural model. Janes and Kermani (2001) reported
considerable resistance by a group of Latino parents in a family literacy
program when they were asked to elicit specic kinds of interactions with
their children while reading aloud. In the present study the teachers
provided the books to the parents but did not specify how the reading
should be conducted. Therefore, the parents integrated the reading aloud
as part of the homework routine. In other words, hints and vestiges of the
parents prior experiences with literacy continue to appear in their ongoing
practices.
262
This study provides a more inclusive and deeper understanding of the
factors determining the success in school literacy of some low-income
Latino children. Looking at the beliefs and practices of the families under
the lens of a sociocultural perspective, one can observe the goals and
circumstances of the literacy events taking place in these families and nd
a more specic explanation beyond the decit or discontinuity view-
points. In addition, observing the literacy events in the home of these
families we can come to understand their views of which literacy they
consider worth transmitting to their children, the inuence of their own
history in the learning of literacy, and their changing conceptions of
literacy learning as they come in contact with a new culture (Barton and
Hamilton, 2000).
An ubiquitous belief of the parents of these families was the importance
of actively supporting their childrens school literacy, which they demon-
strated by engaging them in numerous literacy-related activities. Unlike
Mexican parents reported in other studies (e.g. Valds, 1996), who value
education but view their roles as limited to sending their children to school
and raising them to be polite and well educated, the parents of this study
believed they had an active role in supporting the academic learning of their
children. Their actions contradict the common belief among educators that
Latino parents are too busy surviving in this culture to care about their
childrens education or do not have the tools to help their children in
school.
The learning activities were both formal and informal. Formal activities
included writing planas, completing workbooks, taking dictation, writing
numbers, and writing the names of family members. Informal activities
included playing with words while skipping rope, nding the rst letter of
a word, inventing stories before going to bed, reading advertisements,
playing school, and writing letters to family members in Mexico. The focus
of most of the formal activities was on helping the children use grapho-
phonic clues in the text. They believed that learning to read started with
being able to decode and this required direct instruction. Other types of
clues such as pictures or meaning were granted less attention.
All these literacy events reect on the parents ideas of what constitutes
the type of literacy their children should learn to succeed in their
educational careers. These ideas have been shaped by the parents own
history of literacy learning. Amelia remembers how her parents taught her
before school her name and address in case she got lost. Rosario enjoyed
school so much that she wanted her child to be interested in school related
activities early. In addition, all parents in this study described learning to
read and write copying planas and reading ma-me-mi-mo-mu which
263
depicts a syllabic method for teaching reading. What they described as their
past learning experiences in Mexico, it seems, has not changed substantially
in the last few years. Jimnez et al. (2003) described in their study of two
elementary Mexican schools the great attention teachers gave to promoting
awless production of oral reading and of written work with the inherent
belief that practice makes perfect. They did not observe classroom discus-
sions about text meaning or students interpretation of texts, and in general
reading occurred infrequently.
Because of their strong desire to help their children succeed, these
parents searched for ways of supporting their childrens learning with the
resources and knowledge they had available in a foreign culture. This was
an opportunity for bilingual events to occur while teaching literacy. Rosario
and Eutimio used English and Spanish back and forth while talking about
letters and words in the workbooks. What kind of consequences do these
kinds of events have in childrens literacy learning? We can assume from
the childrens performance that a bilingual environment did not cause
detrimental effects in the childrens literacy learning. Quite the contrary, as
others have suggested (Bialystok, 1997; Bruck amd Genesee, 1995;
Durgunoglu and ney, 2000; Gncz and Kodzopeljic, 1991; Yelland et al.,
1993) knowledge of two languages can facilitate metalinguistic insights
that are favorable for literacy development. Bilingualism has been associ-
ated with the ability to replace one word with another (word awareness),
and with phonological awareness in middle class populations (Bruck and
Genesee, 1995; Gncz and Kodzopeljic, 1991). Gregory (1996) has argued
that emergent bilinguals interest in learning words in the second language
encourages them to pay attention to the boundaries of words, which
appears to facilitate understanding of how words map onto their associated
graphic representations.
If this is the case, why do so many low-income bilinguals have difculty
learning to read? Among the families in this study, bilingualism, with its
metalinguistic benets, developed in a context of active parental support
and literacy practices at home. Literacy activities provide an ideal context
for the display of metalinguistic awareness. For example, as described,
bilingual children tend to easily acquire the concept of one-to-one corre-
spondence between spoken words and their written equivalents. When
these children are exposed to activities in which they need to read words,
they are able to apply this knowledge. If frequent literacy activities are
unavailable for the bilingual child, the heightened awareness she has
developed owing to her bilingualism could be used for learning the second
language orally but not necessarily for reading. Therefore, literacy activities
provide a necessary link for the metalinguistic benets to have an effect.
264
Further research needs to be conducted in order to establish the relation-
ship between bilingualism and specic literacy practices among immigrant
families, and between bilingual events and specic emergent literacy skills.
What is not yet known is whether overt instruction that links metalinguis-
tic awareness of the sort learned by bilingual children to literacy learning
would support or accelerate students understanding of reading and
writing. We suspect it would, given the data on bilingual literacy activities
presented in this study.
Finally, we cannot disregard the contribution of the school to the success
of these children. The schools use of Spanish facilitated the families
support for and active participation in their childrens literacy learning.
Using a language that was understood by the families, the school provided
information about its expectations (by means of homework, instructions
to parents, etc.). In this way the families could not only understand the
schools goals but also gauge their childrens progress. This is a strong
argument against those who have attacked bilingual education in the USA
in the last years.
We cannot predict in what ways these childrens literacy will develop as
they traverse the school system. In a longitudinal study Snchal and
LeFevre (2001) found that children from homes in which the parents
reported teaching literacy skills often but did not read storybooks
frequently were more likely to have advantages over their peers in spelling,
decoding, and alphabet knowledge until the end of rst grade. However, by
third grade this group of children experienced a dramatic decline in their
reading performance compared to their peers. We could expect from these
ndings then that the children of the present study might experience a
decline in their reading achievement by third grade since reading aloud was
not a frequent practice among these families. However, we should also
underscore the ability of these families to adapt and change according to
the demands of the school. On an optimistic note, if the school were to
continue communicating effectively with these families, it is possible that
such a joint effort would synergistically strengthen the possibilities for their
childrens learning.
As shown in this study, schools play an important role facilitating parents
to achieve their goals. Rather than ignoring or belittling the beliefs and
values of immigrant families, schools can design strategies that comple-
ment the parents efforts (Nutbrown and Hannon, 2003). Teachers should
explicitly identify the differences between school experiences in the home
countries of students and those in the USA. The parents of this study were
actively seeking to understand these differences and to nd ways to
accommodate to best help their children.
265
Note
1. Mara Isabel Ramrez was assessed at the end of her kindergarten year.
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