An Analysis of the C6 Biliteracy Framework

By Hannah Julia Paredes Kilnoski

July 14, 2019

This blog post is in fulfillment of Module 25 Unit 3 Activity 1

I decided to research the C6 Biliteracy Framework. I was inspired to research this framework because of its holistic nature and equality between language. This framework was created by Dr. Jose Medina and a team of educators who truly have looked at some of the other researchers who are transforming the dual language education systems of today such as Dr. Ofelia Garcia. Something that also struck me and made me interested to look into it further is its importance given to equality and anti-bias and anti-racist practices in the framework.

Overall, the C6 Biliteracy Framework is structured using 6 C concepts. These C’s are create, connect, collaborate, communicate, consider, and commit. These C’s aim to guide the teacher to create a holistic and supportive, linguistically equal growth environment for students. The framework as a whole, is designed to support the three goals of dual language education as discussed in the Guiding Principles of Dual Language Education 3rd Edition. These are bilingualism and biliteracy, grade level academic achievement in both instruction languages and socio-cultural competence. While educators think about supporting their students by using the 6 C’s, they are also incorporating a 4+1 approach to language learning. The 4+1 domains are listening, speaking, reading, writing and finally making metalinguistic connections.

It seems like a lot of things to think about at once. And what practices are expected from each C? Let’s break it down C by C.

Create

The Create component aims to merge educational content, target language and appropriate language culture. These three things are combined to better support the overall understanding and growth of a student. The Create C is also an area where educators can include cultural learning goals. In lesson planning, the create component could be accomplished by having students read and connect to marginalized peoples and understand the culture and perspectives of the people of that group. This could also be employed in the overall environment in the learning space having both languages equally represented in the classroom in terms of materials, decoration and instruction. Another interesting idea presented by Dr. Medina is creating cross-linguistic and translanguaging spaces for students. This is something that has even been seen and considered a powerful resource for language learning students by teachers who already employ this in their own schools and classrooms.

In my own classroom, I think my co-teachers and I provide a lot of language resources and materials in English and Chinese. Though ours is not specifically a dual language program, there is an aim to give the students the most English immersion possible. For me, this means creating relevant and engaging materials students can use during their Montessori time, create visually captivating and bilingual displays on the classroom wall spaces and bringing in real cultural context that students can relate and interact with in the class content. Some ways I can better incorporate the create component in my classroom is by facilitating and creating a cross-liguistic connection space. I will never discourage the use of Chinese in my class and I think the students and I switch between Chinese and English to relay different information. For example, if we are learning about jobs and the student really wants to tell me about their families’ jobs but can only say specific occupations in Chinese, I encourage that and can later translate into English so they can learn and use real vocabulary for their own situations. I am wondering if this is a good way to start that linguistically fluid space. I think it can be encouraged more and maybe be a set practice for my Montessori time corner.

Connect

The connect component includes many of the same ideas as create but this component also focuses on self-identity of the students. The language learners’ linguistic and cultural backgrounds make up a big part of their language learning experience. The way that many dual language and ELL programs are taught are very much stuck in a model where English is considered the most important or even in the best of situations, sneakily becomes the more highly valued language. This inequality of linguistic importance not only hinders the student’s confidence but also can have a negative effect on their growth in language learning due to lack of true and equal linguistic support. This step in lesson planning can be thought about as including opportunities for students to share their linguistic backgrounds and goals in multiple ways. This component also stresses the acknowledgement of the students’ knowledge across languages, though a student may be unable to express their knowledge in one language, does not mean they are lacking in their understanding of the concepts. In my classroom, I began to think about this when I learned about Dr. Garcia’s translanguaging theory. Many of my students are very young but they understand their lived experiences and feelings towards those things. In my class, I don’t restrict my students from speaking Chinese as long as we are on topic and adding helpful contributions and supporting other students in our class. I also like to arrange for the students to present short oral presentations about themselves to give each student the opportunity to use what they have learned to apply it to their real-life experiences.

Collaborate

The collaborate component focuses on the interaction of students. This C can be used by planning student to student activities, activities with differentiation within groups and bringing students contexts outside of the classrooms as well. The aim here is to not only facilitate student interactions but by doing this, it also gives the students the opportunity to learn about one another, their thoughts, experiences and cultural knowledge that is less efficiently shared by traditional classroom settings. In my own lesson plans, I believe I best incorporate the collaborate area in my student to student activities. We frequently play games that require student interactions such as Onion ring, this game is a mutual interview game. For younger students, they can hold up a flashcard and ask their partner if they like the flashcard content and the student can respond with simple sentence structures such as “yes, I do” or “no, I don’t”. Older or higher level students can ask more in depth questions about their peers families and goals. A way I can improve my current practices is by incorporating more ties to our community and the communities of my students.

Communicate

This component uses the ideas in Collaborate but there is also an increased focus on the language domains. The language domains outlined are referred to as the 4+1 language domains. These include the standard 4, listening, speaking, reading and writing but it also includes metalinguistic connections. For multilingual students, an important part of language learning is the ability to connect their knowledge from all their languages. In dual language programs where the language focuses should be equal, this is practiced by preparing materials in both the languages of instruction to ensure that the opportunity, emphasis and resources are equal in both. In my classroom, I am only in charge of teaching English but I frequently ask my students to translate as we go along to help all students in the class to make appropriate connections between languages. We translate new words and concepts and we review the previous class’ content in both languages at the beginning of each class. A way I can use the communicate practice more in my classroom could be during our final semester projects that are coming up soon. A student could create a bilingual presentation that incorporated the classroom content and the additional concepts learned by our classroom discussions.

Consider

This component challenges the teacher to think about the learning needs and formats that would best sui the students. This includes the opportunities for students to work using their strongest learning style, differentiation in classroom activities and including choice in the ways students are expected to complete their work. This requires teachers to think about and redesign activities to be more diverse and accessible. This is such an important component that helps teachers move toward the equality and accessibility in accommodating all students and to best support students. In my own classroom I think this is something I am lacking in. I try to design each of my lessons with different interaction patterns and aims so that students can move around and use different skills but I’m curious how I can better accommodate different learning styles in a kindergarten classroom. Our Montessori materials focus on different aims and learner types but our English learning materials are mainly focused to visual learners and some for kinesthetic learners. Maybe I can start by thinking of some new activities that engage other learning styles then I can work on creating some more inclusive self-motivated learning materials.

Commit

The final C of the 6 stands for commit. This idea encompasses all of the other C’s and mainly encourages the educators to commit to the idea of this transformation of language education through self-reflection and growth as a teacher as well as the continued commitment for creating the best learning environment for students. This means addressing educational inequality and actively taking steps towards equality in the classroom. Dr. Medina has described this as the hardest C to follow through with. This component not only requires the continuous improvement of the students’ learning environment, but it needs the unwavering support and continued education of the schools’ teachers and administrative leaders to make this possible. I think that I am beginning to learn more about better education practices and a good step in doing this is pursuing this master’s to better help my students currently and in the future.

How Does This Framework Address Socio-cultural Competence?

I believe that this framework is a good idea of the standard that needs to be utilized or at least thought about in every classroom. At its core, this framework has thought about the inequalities facing BIPOC (Black Indigenous & People of Color) in traditional education environments as well as other marginalized populations that are frequently underprivileged and underserved by current educational systems. Even the goals it follows included socio-cultural competence as one of the pillars of its philosophy. There is also no linguistic bias or preferential treatment towards English. Each of the 6 C’s outlined in the framework has a lot of research and inclusive thought behind each expectation by part of the teacher. I also really appreciate the emphasis on administrator action. Far too often, administrators don’t speak the primary language of the school, are unaware of the linguistic and general needs of the schools’ greater community and are disconnected with the teachers who address these students, their needs, and their strengths every day. Upon reading about this framework, I felt so inspired and touched at different points because I could imagine a future generation of educators being truly inclusive and how the students could change and feel supported in their learning environments. We spend so much time in school and our teachers have some of the biggest impacts on how we view the world and how we participate in our society. I wonder if more teachers were engaging students in this way even if just employing or thinking about ways to incorporate one of the C’s outlined in the framework, how would the overall lives of our students change?

This is a fairly new educational system, but I am excited to see where it goes.

References

Colón, I. T. (2019, January 18). Interview with Dr. José Medina on the C6 Biliteracy Instructional Framework. New America. https://www.newamerica.org/education-policy/edcentral/interview-with-dr-jos%C3%A9-medina-on-the-c6-biliteracy-instructional-framework/

George, A. (2020, October 15). Sociocultural Competence in Action. Language Magazine. https://www.languagemagazine.com/2020/10/15/sociocultural-competence-in-action/

Medina, J. (2019, December 18). C6 Biliteracy Framework. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2byBgax4JFw&list=PLjrWsnpS6DILcSDh67haiKaEd3aERAVj0&index=2

Medina, J. (2019, December 21). C6 Biliteracy Framework - Create. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDuEc193v-8&list=PLjrWsnpS6DILcSDh67haiKaEd3aERAVj0&index=3

Medina, J. (2019, February 12). Planning for the Dual Language Classroom: The C6 Biliteracy Framework. Resources for Dual Language Schools, Parents, and Teachers. https://duallanguageschools.org/column/planning-for-the-dual-language-classroom-the-c6-biliteracy-framework/

Medina, J. (2019, November 23). Dr. José Medina at La Cosecha 2019 C6 Biliteracy Framework. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3_y_dDTtfQ&list=PLjrWsnpS6DILcSDh67haiKaEd3aERAVj0&index=1

Medina, J. (2020, February 17). C6 Biliteracy Framework - Communicate. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOLGsTiyOBM&list=PLjrWsnpS6DILcSDh67haiKaEd3aERAVj0&index=6

Medina, J. (2020, February 29). C6 Biliteracy Framework - Consider. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRbdeIbcWdE&list=PLjrWsnpS6DILcSDh67haiKaEd3aERAVj0&index=7

Medina, J. (2020, February 8). C6 Biliteracy Framework - Collaborate. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGHhdZnxrvc&list=PLjrWsnpS6DILcSDh67haiKaEd3aERAVj0&index=5

Medina, J. (2020, January 12). C6 Biliteracy Framework - Connect. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vEcAh0rXuo&list=PLjrWsnpS6DILcSDh67haiKaEd3aERAVj0&index=4

Medina, J. (2020, March 14). C6 Biliteracy Framework Conclusion. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_rXc8JfDgk&list=PLjrWsnpS6DILcSDh67haiKaEd3aERAVj0&index=9

Medina, J. (2020, March 7). C6 Biliteracy Framework - Commit. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohtSConsD88&list=PLjrWsnpS6DILcSDh67haiKaEd3aERAVj0&index=8

Medina, J. (2021, March 19). C6 Biliteracy Framework™. Resources for Dual Language Schools, Parents, and Teachers. https://duallanguageschools.org/column/c6-biliteracy-framework/

Medina, J. (n.d.). The C6 Biliteracy Framework: Lesson Planning Through a Critical. The C6 Biliteracy Framework: Lesson Planning Through a Critical Consciousness Lens | Ellevation Education. https://ellevationeducation.com/blog/biliteracy-framework-lesson-planning