Week 14: Reading and Writing in Different Contexts (Parent and Family Involvement in Literacy Learning)

B&M Ch. 1: Parent Involvement Supporting Early Literacy Achievement

Children should be “collocated in two overlapping environments”—home and school. Both realms influence their literacy development. Relationships between teachers and parents must be made through communication, so there is trust between these two parties. Schools should be accessible for families and parents of all economic, social, ethnic, or cultural backgrounds. There are many research based practices that show how parents can be involved in their child’s school experience.

Research and Theoretical Background: 

There is much research to support the idea that parental involvement benefits their children’s education. This involvement can be direct or indirect depending on the cultural background of the parents.

Research shows that some parents do not get involved in their child’s school life until their child is identified as struggling or at-risk. Another study found that children whose parents take on a more instructional role help their literacy development rather than when their parents took more of a monitoring/supporting role.

Selecting Best Practices for Parent Involvement:

Based on the research evidence to back them up, practices are rated on a scale of likely influentialàprobably efficaciousàeffective.

• Highly influential=When skills practiced seem to correlate with later reading abilities or development.
• Probably Efficacious=When the practice has been evaluated in relation to two or more randomized trials that show that doing the practice is more effective than not doing it.
• Effective=When the practice has been evaluated in two or more randomized trails by independent researchers that find the practice is better than the established idea already in place.

Practices for Making at At-School Involvement More Accessible to Parents (See Table 1.1):

Table 1.1 outlines several activities teachers can draw from to get parents involved in the classroom, as well as strategies to increase parent participation. Providing personal invitations, providing these activities outside of school hours, and expressing clear expectations seem to be the best methods for improving parent participation in these types of activities.

At-home Bridging Activities for Improving Aspects of Literacy (See Table 1.2):

Table 1.2 outlines strong, research-based strategies that can be carried out by parents at home that will help early childhood students improve components of reading. For each activity, the aspect of literacy it ties to, grade level, strategy explanation, accommodations for diverse learners, and level of effectiveness are given. This table also tells how teachers can “scale up” or “scale down” these activities based on the child’s ability and the parent’s willingness or availability. Each of these activities has a way of providing the teacher feedback about what the child learned or improved upon from these at-home activities. Because feedback is built into the activities and relayed back to the teacher, these home strategies provide formative assessments for the teacher.

Knowledge to Practice:

Encouraging Parent Involvement in School Setting: Parental involvement means different things to different parents, based on their cultural or personal backgrounds. Teacher sometimes mistakenly believe that if parents do not volunteer, attend field trips, or do extra work with students, they do not value education. This is usually not true. Parents may have limited involvement in their child’s educational experience for a variety of reasons: low personal academic self-efficacy, feelings of inadequacy, amount of social capital, language barriers, transportation, childcare for younger siblings, mental health, financial worries, and stress. Teachers who go above and beyond to make sure their students’ parents are well-informed of school/classroom activities (providing information in home language), able to attend the flexible times given, and made to feel comfortable in the physical school building will have greater parental involvement.  

Encouraging Parental Involvement with Literacy Development at Home: This area involves three components.

•        Creating a physical context for learning
•        Monitoring and setting rules for children’s school attendance and homework
•        Direct involvement in learning—reading, tutoring, playing educational games

Engaging in these three areas improves literacy skills and abilities. Parents’ knowledge, resources, time, and cultural differences can be barriers to these three things. The most important thing parents can do at home to help with literacy development is to value education in front of their children.

Creating a Bridge between School and Home: Schools can do much to create connection or bridge between themselves and their students’ homes.

• When sending home an activity, teachers should explain how that activity will help the child.
• Teachers can provide the materials and resources needed (books, audiobooks, iPads) for families to engage in interactive readings together.
• Teachers can use the feedback loop to connect at-home activities to their classroom instruction. Parents’ evaluation of their children at home gives teachers valuable information about those children.
• Teachers should use direct, pedagogical-free jargon when conversing with parents.
• Schools should try to use more flexible means of communication with parents: face-to-face meetings, phone calls, translators, translated notes.
• Teachers should provide parents with frequent, short information about their student’s academic progress.
• Teachers can encourage parents to engage in literacy activities in the family’s home language.
•   Parents with disabilities should also engage in literacy activities at home. Technology-related activities are very effective with these students.
• Teachers can provide training (face-to-face meetings or videos) to parents on how to complete and lead at-home literacy activities.
• All at-home activities should be enjoyable, easy to do, and require little time.  

Discussion Questions:

1. Thinking about Table 1.1, have you tried any of the ideas in the first column to get parents involved in your classroom? Did you employ any of the strategies in the second column to increase parent participation?

2. Table 1.2 provides lots of great strategies that can be used at home. How would you initiate a program that uses these strategies? How would you communicate your ideas to parents? How would you use the information you received back from the activities?