Education Commons^™

Getting To What Is: Poetry As A Genre Of Access For Multilingual Learners, Audrey A. Friedman, Joelle M. Pedersen, Chris K. Bacon

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

This paper explores the poetry writing of 15, multilingual ninth graders to construct a practitioner framework for analyzing writing as discourse with multilingual learners (MLs). Grounded in an understanding of poetry as a genre of access for both teachers and students, we asked: How does poetry—read as a specific, situated discourse—reveal linguistic and cultural competence among MLs in an urban, high-school classroom?

Using four tools of Critical Discourse Analysis—situated meaning, significance building, connections building, and identity building—we analyzed student poetry produced via an online mentoring platform. Through applying these lenses, three major themes emerged, which structured our framework: language experimentation, …