Family Engagement Focused on Literacy

With a solid grounding in good family engagement practices that set parents up for success, next it is important to provide parents with specific ways they can effectively support their child’s literacy and language growth throughout their child’s development. 

Below are some examples of effective family engagement activities along the involvement-to-engagement continuum for both younger and older students.

Examples of effective involvement and engagement activities:

• Encourage parents and families to read, talk, sing, and play with their young children and help them understand thate they have what it takes to be their child’s first and most important teacher. Help caregivers connect the direct impact those activities will have on their child’s language and literacy development and future academic success.
• Equip parents and families with information and home literacy activities that will support their children’s learning along the literacy continuum of reading, speaking, listening and writing. Help parents understand the specific skill areas that help children learn to read effectively: oral language skills, phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. Show parents how to support their children in each of these reading skills areas.
• Provide parents and families with data and regular, timely, transparent, and accessible updates about their children’s literacy progress. It is important for parents to know if their child has fallen behind or if they are progressing well.
• Check in to make sure that parents and families understand their children’s literacy needs and how to help them. Set specific goals for advancing literacy in partnership with parents and families and outline actions that will change or improve behaviors and impact children’s literacy skills. Celebrate successes with parents and students. 
• Provide effective tools to help parents and families connect home activities to classroom learning (e.g., apps, websites, etc.).
• Give concrete suggestions on texts to read at home, on games that build literacy skills that students can play or families can play together (wordle, scrabble, boggle, etc.), and on how to have interactive conversations that support their child’s learning and development.
• Provide access to effective parent literacy workshops, trainings, or coaching for parents of children ages birth to five (such as home-visitation programs, Parents as Teachers, Raising a Reader, Abriendo Puertas, Academic Parent Teacher Team model, etc.) and for parents of early elementary students to support their child learning to read. And, create and conduct relevant learning and workshops for parents of older students in upper elementary and middle school. Conduct surveys to find out what parents want/need to learn.
• Conduct multi-session trainings over time that use good adult-learning principles and include the opportunity for adult learners to apply their new learning and practice new skills they will use to support their child’s literacy and learning.
• Develop or partner with other community agencies to provide opportunities for parents to build skills they care about, connect with peers, and embrace various roles such as becoming advocates, volunteers, leaders, pursuing personal goals and professional learning, getting involved in school reform efforts, etc. Consider hosting or partnering with a relevant community organization to provide a parent leadership institute. 

Supporting Parents in Effective Daily Reading Routines

Parent involvement in early literacy is directly connected to academic achievement. Children need parents and families to be their reading role models with daily practice in order to navigate successfully through beginning literacy skills. The latest research stresses that children need to be given more opportunities to develop specific skills while being read to in order to become successful readers. When parents and families not only read to their children but read with them and engage in conversation interactively, you see faster literacy development by one or two grade levels.

Strategies to Share with Parents to Support Reading Success

Books can be shared together and/or discussed with children of all ages as they progress in their literacy development. It is important to provide parents with strategies and resources so they know how to support students while sharing books together across these different developmental stages.

• Read broadly. Introduce different genres of books and let the child self-select texts of various kinds. Create a special at-home library where children keep their favorite books. Ensure children have access to both fiction and nonfiction books. Provide books that align with a child’s interests.
• Embrace repetition. Allow the child to read the same books multiple times. This helps build comprehension and narrative skills as well as language and vocabulary. Even older students can benefit from rereading favorite books and reflecting on how their thinking of the book has changed or developed.
• Point to each word on the page as they read. This beginning literacy strategy will assist young children with making print/story/ illustration connections. This skill also helps build a child’s tracking skills from one line of text to the next.
• Examine the book cover. Read the title. Ask the child to make a prediction about what the book will be about. This will go a long way to ensure that a child incorporates previewing and prediction in his or her own reading practices both now and in the future. For older students this practice works well for predicting and also accessing background knowledge that may be related to what the book will be about. Ask them:  “What do you think this book will about? What makes you think that?
• Take “picture walks.” Help young children use the picture clues in most early readers and picture books to tell the story before reading.
• Model fluency while reading, and bring energy and excitement for reading to their child and for listening to their older child read. Both new and seasoned readers struggle with varying pitch, intonation, and proper fluctuations when they read aloud. Older readers will benefit from shared reading (taking turns). Encourage older readers to sound out challenging words. Help your child pronounce difficult words correctly.
• Ask the child questions while reading. There are several proven strategies to help adults understand how to read interactively with their child, such as dialogic reading and others. Ask “W” questions to check for understanding:  Who? What? When? Where? Why? I wonder if…?  Ask questions about what is happening in the story and what could happen next. Encourage children to connect to the text by asking questions such as, “How do you think the character feels? What would you do in this situation?” Using open-ended questions helps children engage with the story and share their thinking. For older students, consider reading the same book together and discussing what you thought after each chapter.
• Ask the child questions after reading every book. The Arizona’s English Language Arts Standards assessing children’s readiness for the workplace and college ask children to compare and contrast their understanding of concepts. This takes practice. Help the child explain his or her understanding of any given story in comparison to another. Have the child share a personal experience similar to a problem or theme within a story. Ask a child to share their favorite characters and if they remind them of any other great characters they love from other stories.
• After reading a story, ask the child to retell it. Retelling the main events of a story help children develop summarizing skills, narrative and sequential ordering skills, and improves comprehension. For older students ask them to share their favorite parts in the course of the book and to comment on whether they enjoyed the ending or wish it might have been different.
• Connect reading and writing if possible. The connection between reading, writing, and discussion should be incorporated with daily literacy practice. Have a young child dictate to a parent who writes in a journal or on a sheet of paper. Have an older child keep a journal where they reflect on their favorite books. Older students might write down favorite quotes from books or draw favorite scenes.
• "Read the world." Find opportunities to point to, describe, and discuss things they see around them throughout the day, such as the text on a stop sign. Children need both rich conversation and a variety of experiences that enhance their vocabulary and understanding of the world around them.
• Register the child for a library card. Then make regular visits to your local library.
• For older students who can read on their own, encourage them to read 20 minutes a day. Ask them to share their thoughts about what they’ve read and how they’re enjoying it. 

For more information on how parents and families can support their child’s early literacy development, see Read On Arizona’s Early Literacy Guide for Families, a resource for Arizona families with children ages birth through eight.

Strong Transitions (Ages 4 and Up): What Schools and Families Can Do to Address Child Readiness

Children enter kindergarten from a variety of settings, such as homes, child-care centers, family child care, preschools, and Head Start programs. Wherever they come from, it’s important to prepare young children for school to set them up for long-term academic success.

Studies show that parents and families commonly rely on schools to oversee their children’s education once the child enters kindergarten. Schools can change this tendency by offering transition activities that encourage family engagement. Some ideas to involve parents in ensuring effective transitions to kindergarten include:

• Creating transition plan timelines a year or more out, including invitations to pre–K night.
• Contacting preschool parents and families to establish relationships and engage in a dialogue about how to set up effective transition practices.
• Offering kindergarten visits, including school tours and meeting the teacher, principal, and staff.
• Providing home-learning activities such as summer book lists and other literacy activities for the months leading to kindergarten.
• Holding informational meetings and parent orientations.
• Creating flyers and brochures on the transition to kindergarten, including kindergarten registration guidelines and kindergarten options in the community.
• Partnering with local PTOs and parent support groups to inform parents and families how they can be involved in their child’s kindergarten classroom and connect new parents and families with families currently enrolled in the school.
• Staffing bilingual teacher aides and parent liaisons as needed in early care, preschool, and kindergarten settings.

When schools and families work together to help young children transition from home to pre–K to kindergarten, the result can be real progress for students. However, transitions don’t end with kindergarten. We must support parents and families so they can maintain an active role to ensure that their children move successfully from grade to grade throughout the early years of school and beyond. 

Supporting Parents of Struggling Readers  

An important aspect of family engagement is to help parents understand what to do if they suspect their child may be struggling with reading. Regular communication between teachers and parents around their child’s progress can help. In addition, parents should be given specific strategies that they can try at home to help their child make progress in the exact skill area that informal or formal classroom assessments have identified as areas for further growth. In addition, parents can be encouraged to ask specific questions of their child’s teachers or school principal, such as the following:

• How do I know if my child has a reading problem? 
• Does my child have any of the early signs of dyslexia? 
• What screenings are available for my child? How often will my child be assessed and how will I be kept up to date on my child’s progress?
• How do you determine what kind of extra support and instruction my child needs?  
• What are the specific skills my child is struggling with? Is it phonics and decoding, fluency, comprehension, or vocabulary skills? How is my child being taught these reading skills? 
• What parent activities, workshops, or supports are available to me so I can help my child with reading? 
• I know that Arizona has a third-grade reading retention law if students do not show sufficient reading ability by the end of third grade. How or when will I know if my child will be retained? 

Nearly 1 in 5 students may struggle in school because of a language-based learning difference. Dyslexia is the most common of the language-based learning differences. Providing parents information about dyslexia and helping them understand the early warning signs can be a key factor in early intervention for students who may exhibit characteristics of dyslexia. See Read On Arizona’s Dyslexia Resource Guide for Families.