Literacy Matters - Vol 21 - Winter 2021

1. First, Wantanabe Kganesto suggests that teachers learn about the literacy practices in your students’ cultures and communities . This important component of creating culturally sustaining informational texts may involve students, families, and community members. It requires informal observation of students and families and the places, events, activities, practices, traditions, and daily routines that are important to their lives and roles as members of their community. To facilitate this part of the process for young learners, teachers may inquire about these ideas by creating family surveys. The surveys can be used to solicit information directly from family members about what is valued and important. 2. Second, Wantanabe Kganesto encourages educators to create a plan for the text informed by the genre and authentic texts . After gathering information about potential topics, educators should identify a topic that is best suited for the specific type of informational text that is to be made. For example, a procedural, or how-to, text lends itself well to topics such as making your bed or riding a bike. An informative or explanatory text might describe the places in a community that a child visits on a regular basis such as the library, community center, or grocery store. Wantanabe Kganesto touts the importance of referencing examples of the text genre to ensure that the texts you create or co-create with students are authentic and reflective of the intended genre. 3. The third step in the process reminds educators to incorporate known content and new content into the text. In order to complete this step, educators must first identify what children know and need to know about the topic. A child co-creating a book on places in the community may be familiar with the local community center but may not be aware of all of the services it provides or the local historical figure for who it is named. It is the educator’s role to then identify how to best present the new information and make authentic connections between the known and unknown content for the text. step in creating culturally sustaining informational texts with young children. After writing an initial draft of the text, educators should reflect on what has been written and consider additional ways to support students who will read the text. This step might also occur after an initial reading of the text with students. Wantanabe Kganesto (2016) offers the following reflection questions for educators to consider as they read through the culturally sustaining informational text: “Does the text include the necessary content in an accessible way for your specific students? Does it accomplish the genre’s purpose, include important features, incorporate familiar content, and enable the use of genre-specific literacy practices?” (pg. 453). 4. Making adjustments to support future readers is the fourth

As part of culturally sustaining pedagogy, a child’s family story can become an essential component of the curriculum that is used to showcase the family’s experiences as a meaningful and relevant contribution to the classroom. In normalizing the lifestyles and daily practices of families from historically marginalized populations, early childhood educators can work to shift power dynamics and support students’ academic growth. Embedding family stories within the early childhood curriculum can ensure the critical and continual presence of students’ culture in our classrooms and communities (Gutiérrez & Rogoff, 2003; Paris & Alim, 2017). Informational Stories Like identity stories and family stories, informational stories can be used as part of a culturally sustaining curriculum to embody a critical centering on community languages, valued practices and knowledges (Paris & Alim, 2017). This is particularly important for children whose cultural background and identities are not typically included in informational texts found in the early childhood classroom. As students interact with informational texts in school, they gain knowledge in different content areas, develop vocabulary terms, encounter varied text structures, improve comprehension, and demonstrate higher levels of engagement (Rodríguez, 2009). Informational texts provide purposeful and authentic reasons for reading and can serve as an entry point into literacy for young children (Caswell & Duke, 1998; Gallo & Ness, 2013; Hall, 2016). Moreover, informational texts are useful in expanding children’s vocabulary and background knowledge through focused exposure to diverse topics and ideas, content-specific words and discourse, and a variety of text features that support the acquisition of information (Cummins & Stallmeyer-Gerard, 2011; Gallo & Ness, 2013; Hall, 2016; Pappas, 2016; Yopp & Yopp, 2012). Co-creating culturally sustaining informational stories with young children can work to “[center] the dynamic practices and selves of students and communities of Color in a critical, additive, and expansive vision of schooling” (Alim & Paris, 2017, p.3). For young children, a culturally sustaining informational story might provide information about a cultural or community practice, holiday, or religious observance. A child attending his older sister’s quinceanera could create a culturally sustaining informational story to outline the purpose and describe the festivities that occur at the event. Likewise, a Native American student could create an informational story to describe her collection of Native American Katsina dolls. Wantanabe Kganestso (2017) describes how informational stories written by young children “contain terms and illustrations from a child’s specific community, such as the word buggy for a shopping cart or a picture of a high-rise apartment building for a home” (p. 445).

Literacy Matters Critical Literacy Matters

Early childhood educators seeking to create or co- create culturally sustaining literacy texts with their students can access five basic steps as outlined by Wantanabe Kganesto (2017) to facilitate the process:

| 10 | Literacy Matters | Volume 21 • Winter 2021

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