In this article, I draw on an ethnographic case study of one Toronto elementary
school, as part of a Canada]wide action research project: Multiliteracy Project
(www.multiliteracies.ca). I have explored how Perminder, a grade]4 teacher, developed
a multiliteracies pedagogy, drawing on her own and her studentsf identities and
linguistic and cultural forms of capital to create learning opportunities for all students
to access the English mainstream curriculum. Alternative pedagogical choices included
studentsf creation of multimodal dual language gidentity textsh (Cummins,
Bismilla, Cohen, Giampapa, & Leoni, 2005a), and identity work, expanding literacy
practices valued within Canadian classrooms.