This interactional ethnographic study addresses a major gap in the educational research literature—the development of academic literacies with linguistically diverse elementary students. It examines how students in a third-grade bilingual classroom are provided with opportunities for learning academic content and becoming academically literate.

This year-long study builds upon previous work done from an academic literacies perspective by using both ethnography and discourse analysis to investigate how literate practices and opportunities for learning were socially constructed by the teacher and students in this classroom. An exploration of the significant aspects of this classroom culture, as seen from the students' perspectives, (i.e., working together, being bilingual, and learning differently) demonstrates how each of these became cultural resources that the students drew upon and utilized for gaining academic literacies. Through detailed ethnographic and sociolinguistic analyses of particular literate practices (identifying and constructing patterns and making predictions and using evidence) and how these were introduced and developed across the school year, what counted as academic literacies in this classroom became visible. Examination of the social construction of intertextual ties demonstrated how students learned to use these literate practices both within and across academic content areas and how they understood both the situated and general nature of their use.

Findings from this study have implications for theory as well as classroom practice and professional development. Findings suggest that an expansion of an academic literacies approach is needed to make visible the opportunities for acquiring academic literacies and learning academic content that are constructed and available to students, as well as to better understand how access to academic literacies is provided or denied. They also suggest that professional educators need to think about their classroom practice and implementation of content area curricula with linguistically diverse students in new ways. By making visible how the teacher in this classroom provided students with the academic support that they needed to become academically literate, this study presents a positive case of what is possible in bilingual classrooms.