This study focuses on ways of organising literacy instruction to raise the skill levels of low-achieving, language minority students. The study involves two teachers and twenty-two students of their students from the Dominican Republic, most of whom had scored well below the 41st percentile in Spanish and English reading and writing tests (the Language Assessment Battery). The literacy activities were organised around culturally relevant literature and patterns of discourse. The students were charged with the tasks of researching, collecting and committing community-generated narratives to memory. In the classroom, they presented, critiqued, edited and revised the narratives. Findings show that community generated oral narratives were useful in helping to engage the students in critical literary discussion. The students addressed a variety of concerns with content, form and language in relation to personal and cultural ways of knowing about literature. Findings also show that the students' writing and discourse, in both their mother tongue and English, was richer and more elaborate when they were allowed to draw upon those patterns of language used in their everyday interactions. The study extends theories pertaining to the role that student knowledge plays in literacy instruction and helps teachers to better understand how students' cultural literature, patterns of discourse and ways of knowing influence their participation, performance and learning.