Language and Literacy Development in Bilingual Children with Special Needs

This course centers on differentiating instruction for bi/multilingual children with exceptionalities ad they develop a new/second language and biliteracy. The course is grounded in the premise that the education of young bi/multilingual children with exceptionalities should include explicit language and content area instruction. Candidates will become acquainted with a range of factors that impact language development, bilingualism, biliteracy, and its instruction in languages other than English, particularly Spanish and Chinese. Candidates will explore how early instruction in alphabetic languages such as English and Spanish, early literacy development should include cross-linguistic development and comparisons of phonological and phonemic awareness. In Chinese, pronunciation (especially tones), and scaffolding the writing of characters are important factors that impact literacy development. These factors might be compounded with the importance of vocabulary growth and discourse. Candidates will explore factors that might signal referral for special education services. Throughout the semester, candidates will be exposed to the conceptual considerations and evidence based supports necessary to ensure that bi/multilingual children with exceptionalities are able to experience positive school outcomes. These include culturally responsive and evidence based instructional strategies that build on children’s prior knowledge, interests, and motivation to expand their bilingual and biliterate competencies. Lectures, readings, assignments, and course activities will foster candidates’ abilities to effectively teach literacy and biliteracy in bi/multilingual children with exceptionalities. Twenty (20) hours of field work focused on the needs of bi/multilingual children with exceptionalities is required for this course.

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