Effects of a Paired Literacy Program on Emerging Bilingual Children's Biliteracy Outcomes in Third Grade

This longitudinal study examined whether the implementation of a Spanish-English paired literacy approach provides an academic advantage to emerging bilingual students over a sequential literacy approach. The study employed a quasi-experimental design. It compared the biliteracy outcomes of third-grade emerging bilingual learners participating in paired literacy instruction from Grades K-3 (n = 167) to those of students from the same schools who received sequential literacy instruction in K-2 and started to participate in the paired literacy model in third grade (n = 191). Students' writing and reading were assessed in both languages using informal measures; third-grade reading scores on a high-stakes state assessment were also examined. Independent-samples t tests were conducted to compare means on the four measures (Spanish and English writing and reading), and Cohen's d was calculated to generate effect sizes for each assessment in each language. Frequencies were run to determine the percentage of students who met or exceeded the state test performance standards. Findings indicate that the paired literacy group scored considerably higher than students in the comparison group on all measures. Furthermore, differences between groups were statistically significant for each outcome measure in each language with moderate to large effect sizes (0.42 to 0.90). Also, a larger percentage of students in the paired literacy group met or exceeded the state test performance standards. These findings suggest that paired literacy instruction leads to stronger literacy outcomes in both languages than sequential literacy. Implications for practice and future research are provided.