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Designing a Community
Translanguaging Space Within
a Family Literacy Project
Sujin Kim, Kim H. Song
A multilingual family storybook project serves as a community
translanguaging space where family and community members collaboratively
work to build a collective communicative repertoire of multiple languages
and modes.
I
n this article, we explore how a multilingual family
literacy project can enhance family engagement in
children’s literacy development in an urban school
context. Drawing on translanguaging, the emerg-
ing framework of language learning and teaching,
we introduce a multilingual family storybook proj-
ect in which families from multiple backgrounds
built on their existing family funds of knowledge.
Participating families collaborated through what
we call community translanguaging to create their
unique family storybooks using varying languages
and diverse modes. We provide a detailed descrip-
tion of the project and make a step-by-step recom-
mendation of how such family literacy projects can
be designed and implemented in schools. Such a
community-based family literacy program can not
only reach families from diverse backgrounds but
also activate and use family and community linguis-
tic and cultural resources.
The context of this family storybook project
begins with our efforts to address the prevalent
challenge across schools in connecting with fami-
lies from diverse linguistic, racial, and cultural
backgrounds. Despite the crucial role of families in
children’s literacy development (Payne, Whitehurst,
& Angell, 1994), schools find it difficult to design
effective family literacy programs to engage and
integrate family members (Clymer, Toso, Grinder,
& Sauder, 2017). As Compton-Lilly (2009) once
described how a closer look at the students’ and
families’ literacy practices reframed her beliefs
about and practices with her students and their
families, community-based research on how fami-
lies engage in literacy practices can facilitate new
perspectives. So, we asked, What would happen if
the school engages families in a literacy project in
ways that validate and draw from the existing liter-
acy practices of these families and their larger com-
munities? How can such a family literacy project
counter English-only literacy norms while develop-
ing the students’ and families’ multilingual capacity
and metalinguistic awareness?
As part of a larger research project, the multilin-
gual family storybook project aimed to address the
lack of support for urban multiracial and multilin-
gual families in a Spanish immersion elementary
charter school (SIES, a pseudonym) in which K–5
students engage in the core curriculum in Spanish.
A Midwestern university research team and SIES
educators partnered to develop a Family Stories in
Multi-Languages project. Thirteen families partici-
pated in a schoolwide bilingual storytelling event
and subsequent workshops. Then, five families and
six students joined the multilingual family story-
book project workshops over the next four months
and published storybooks.
Drawing from existing literature on how educa-
tors can better access and activate diverse students’
and their families’ funds of knowledge (Dworin,
2006; Moll & Greenberg, 1990), we showcase how our
FEATURE ARTICLE
The Reading Teacher Vol. 73 No. 3 pp. 267–279 doi:10.1002/trtr.1820 © 2019 International Literacy Association
Sujin Kim is an assistant professor in the College of
Education and Human Development at George Mason
University, Fairfax, VA, USA; email skim222@gmu.edu.
Kim H. Song is a professor in the Department of Educator
Preparation and Leadership at the University of Missouri,
St. Louis, USA; email songk@msx.umsl.edu.