Multilingual Learning Inside/Outside the Classroom: Insights from Intra‐Active Events

Abstract

AbstractAs K‐5 dual language programs gain popularity in the United States, language teaching, however, often still prioritizes discrete and decontextualized learning that is not built on students’ interests and experiences or their multilingual and multimodal resources. This article reports on a classroom‐based ethnographic case study and illustrates how emergent bilinguals in a fifth grade dual language class engaged in a variety of multimodal experiences to understand local history through their first and second languages, community‐based inquiries, and writing. Drawing on translanguaging and new materialist understandings of language and literacy, the authors describe intra‐active events generated through museum activities and discussions in English and Chinese that allowed students to assemble whole‐body experiences and discussions in their journal writing about a day in the 18th century. The study shows how translanguaging can foster students’ engagement in learning as assemblages of their multilingual, multimodal, and multisensory experiences and support their writing processes and products, not only in a second language, but all language and literacy classrooms.