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This article shares a monthly curricular model that can help teachers and families bridge the gap between home and school by using literature and response inspired from the cultures in the classroom. Integrating culturally responsive texts and family response journals into the classroom and the home can help children, their families, and peers make critical connections to the literature as well as understand diversity as a productive resource. This yearlong curriculum model took place in a diverse kindergarten classroom that included children and families representing a wide range of socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds. This article focuses on three months of the curricular structure where families engaged in literature focused on adoption. Findings demonstrated that families’ responses led to expanded views of family structures and cultures and provided space for critical conversations around texts in the home and school. Authentic family and child responses are included in the article.

Monolingual language ideologies marginalize the language resources of multilingual students in English‐dominant classrooms. A teacher shares her experience of learning to leverage kindergarten students’ full linguistic repertoires. Translanguaging pedagogies allowed children to demonstrate their linguistic knowledge, provide authentic accounts of their own personal experience, and connect with family and community resources.

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Oral storytelling is a culturally sustaining practice that aids emergent writing development by leveraging family and community capital to bridge student access to school-based literacy practices.