The first book to offer practical guidance on creating a multilingual literacy environment in early years settings

All children can benefit from the language activities they have engaged in at home and, as part of the curriculum, prepare themselves to be writers, comprising script systems and preparing texts for specific purposes. Charmian Kenner grounds her work in a theoretical framework which unites research on emergent literacy with that on bilinguallearning. She has drawn on her research in a South London nursery class to produce this lively illustrated account of how bilingual children come to grips with written language.

Each of the five chapters ends with ideas for teachers - about:

• finding out about home literacy


• creating a multilingual literacy environment at school


• encouraging children as writers


• helping children to investigate written languages


• developing children's knowledge of symbols and text design.

This book is for all infant and early years teachers who want to build on children's home backgrounds when helping them to understand how language works. It will also be invaluable to students of bilingualism, EMTAG teams and to teacher educators.