This paper presents two interdependent parts: the first investigates ways in which emergent bilingual children (Bengali/English) aged five to seven go about literacy learning in their mother-tongue (Bengali) in their community classes outside mainstream school; the second explores ways in which children of older Primary school age (nine to eleven) mediate school language and literacy to their younger siblings. Finally, examples are given of practical ways in which teachers can build upon children's existing skills from learning about their reading strategies in their mother-tongue classes as well as their informal English language learning with siblings. These examples include practical work with families and using children's bilingual knowledge in classroom lessons. The work presented is taking place in the area of Tower Hamlets, East London, Britain and draws upon findings from a variety of funded projects which have taken place over the past decade, including the Economic and Social Research Council's 'Family Literacy History and Children's Learning Strategies at Home and at School', 'Siblings as Mediators of Language and Literacy in Two East London Communities' and 'Grandparents as Teachers and Learners: Intergenerational Learning in East London'. Although the work has no direct links with bilingual programmes in Latin America, findings from parts of the project were presented to mother-tongue teachers in La Paz, Bolivia during an In-Service session in April 2000 and links have been established with the MA course set up by Prof. Enrique Lopez in Cochabamba, Bolivia.
Our initial hypotheses upon beginning the projects were:
i) that emergent bilingual and biliterate children are able to call upon a range of metalinguistic and metacognitive strategies in learning to read in a new language and that their ability to do this depends upon recognition of these skills by the classroom teacher;
ii) that the wider family and community might play a unique role in fostering learning, particularly when parents are unfamiliar with the way literacy is viewed and taught in school.

Key aims of the project were to question the prevailing paradigm that only parents contribute to children's home literacy development and to provide teachers with new insights on both siblings, grandparents and community language classes as potentially valuable resources when planning home-school partnerships.
By combining the methodologies of ethnography and ethnomethodology, the study examined the relationship between activities taking place in children's homes and communities and the ways in which literacy was presented and taught in the schools.
Classroom observations in the mainstream and community classes were made during different stages of the project. Other sources of data included diaries and audiotapes made by siblings, interviews and videotapes of activities taking place between grandparents and their young grandchildren. These were all recorded, transcribed and analysed. Multi-layering of the data enabled a close analysis to be made of social context, teachers' individual strategies and children's interaction during play activities. Our argument throughout this work is that schools should take children's home and community learning seriously as they devise literacy policies.