Drawing upon a theoretical framework that acknowledges the bidirectional relationship between local discursive acts and institutional structures, this paper analyzes classroom observations with student interviews to understand how fifth-grade multilingual learners are making sense of dialogic literacy instruction to support their reading development. Findings reveal a relationship between how a learner's identity with reading informs how they understand the utility of classroom dialogue to support reading development, and subsequently the degree to which they exert agency to engage in classroom literacy practices.