Family Literacy

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Family Literacy
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If you could change two things

• Jot them down on a piece of paper.

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Think about strengths and needs

• What are your parents already doing to help
  support their children at school?
• What do your parents need so that they could be
  more supportive?

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What do WE have control over?
As educators, what can we help to change?
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What are potential roadblocks?

• Jot them down on a piece of paper.

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Parent Involvement is Important

• Regardless of socioeconomic status, ethnic/racial
  background or parents educational level
• Behavior is more pro-social and positive and
  academics are significantly better when parents
  are involved

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Parents as Models

• Dont ask parents to create an artificial
  literacy environment. Have them use what they
  already have.
• Reading newspapers, TV guides, crossword puzzles
  (Purcell-Gates, 1996)
• Parents can share the reading of these materials
  with their child. Show the child how these types
  of text are beneficial.
• Parents with low literacy can focus on oral
  retelling of family events, and making up stories
  to go along with picture books (Wolter, 1995)
• Parents should begin reading to their child even
  before the child can speak (Purcell-Gates, 1996)

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How Parents Can Help

• Oral language/vocabulary development
• Home literacy environment
• Development and support of desired behaviors
• Academic (homework) and behavioral
• Writing

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Effective Family Literacy Nights

• The whole family should be involved - everyone
  should feel welcome and useful
• Families can be recruited - newspaper, radio,
  school bulletins
• Scheduling, transportation and child care issues
  should be addressed, and solutions provided
• Parents generally only attend 30 of the
  sessions. They need to go in order for the
  activities to be implemented.

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Overview

• (1) Developing the Home-School Connection
• (2) Homework Night
• (3) Behaviors That Are Important for School
  Success
• (4) Oral Language Having Conversations
  
• (5) Oral Language - Classroom Tour
• (6) Oral Language Oral Family Traditions
• (7) Oral Language - Reading Aloud
• (8) Non-fiction Night
• (9) Writing Night

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Session Structure

• First week of the month.
• In preparation for the following month, teachers
  should meet and plan for the next session in the
  third week.
• Each session will begin with a quick review of
  the prior session and Q A that emphasizes
  family input.
• Each night teachers or other staff model literacy
  behavior that is being taught during that
  session.

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Session Structure

• Children are dropped off in their classrooms with
  their teacher.
• Parents go to common meeting place for overview
  and lecture portion.
• Parents go to classroom and join their children
  for the associated activity.

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Session Structure

• Families take home a calendar of seven possible
  activities. An artifact is produced and brought
  back to the next session.
• To encourage parents to attend and take part in
  literacy activities throughout the month, a small
  reward will be given to the family when they
  produce evidence of having completed 4 out of 7
  activities.

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Workshop 1 Developing the Home School
Connection

• Welcome- Mission and Vision Schools goals for
  every child.
• Importance of family involvement.
• Stress the importance of attendance at each
  session throughout the year.

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Workshop 1 Developing the Home School
Connection

• Are there any issues that will prevent regular
  attendance?
• Transportation issues?
• Time of the day?
• Who is invited?
• Child care?
• Food?

It is the schools responsibility to come up with
possible solutions.
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Workshop 1 Developing the Home School
Connection

• Offer ideas and suggestions to parents to get
  print resources into their homes.
• Lending Library
• School Library
• Universities and Colleges
• Book Swap Club

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Activity for the Session

• Make a Book

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Efficacy of Homework

• Homework is not the great equalizer
• Homework is not always effective
• How much and how often depends on the support at
  home and the age/grade of the student
• Students need to be able to complete the
  assignment independently
• The parent needs to be made aware of the how the
  assignment should be completed
• Homework should not result in stress for the
  parent and/or child
• Homework should be completed by the child

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Homework How Parents Can Help

• Foster independence
• Problem-solving
• Quiet environment
• Placing value on academics
• Homework could be done before we go home

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Workshop 2- Homework

• Monthly Teacher Meeting
• When the teachers meet together to plan the
  upcoming homework family literacy night they
  should be encouraged to discuss the following
• Homework should be something the students do
  independently
• Parent support should be designed to support
  autonomy
• Not doing the homework or teaching the student
  how to do the assignment

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Activity for the Session

• Make a homework calendar
• The student will write down the homework
  assignment each day at take it home with him/her
  (parents should be looking at this daily)
• Parents can help the students schedule their
  activities
• Sports
• Clubs
• School
• Play
• Discuss at least 5 ways that the home environment
  can be structure to accommodate quiet study
• Teachers can help problem solve at this time

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Behavior

• Children with more secure attachments respond
  better to family literacy programs (St. Pierre,
  Ricciulti Rimdzius, 2005)
• Parent discipline (Bradley Corwyn, 2002)
• Low SES parents are more likely to spank or use
  harsh punishments with their child
• Coercive environment with negative reinforcement
  being most often used
• Use Positive Behavior Support
• Negative reinforcement trap
• Behavioral expectations

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Workshop 3 Behaviors That Are Important for
School Success

• First 10-15 minutes of the night should be used
  to discuss the first session and answer any
  questions that the parents may have.

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Workshop 3 Behaviors That Are Important for
School Success

• Goals for this workshop
• Classroom Rules
• Mission Statement
• Description of positive behaviors for school
  success
• Discuss how parents can support those positive
  behaviors
• Discuss how the desired behaviors at school are
  the same and different from desired behaviors in
  different situations
• Discuss how the parents can support appropriate
  positive behaviors when the child is not at
  school

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Workshop 3 Behaviors That Are Important for
School Success

• This means that teachers need to know and be able
  to discuss
• School rules
• Classroom rules
• How they are the same or different
• The implied, but unwritten rules

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Activity for the Session

• Parents break into small groups.
• Discussion of things that their children do that
  are inappropriate or cause problems at home.
• Working together, come up with better replacement
  behaviors for the child.
• Discuss how the behaviors needed for school
  success can be supported at home.
• They problem-solve this together, instead of
  having the session leader tell them what they
  should be doing.

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Oral Language and Reading Comprehension

• A students oral language skills in kindergarten
  is a very good indicator of how well they will be
  able to comprehend written language in fourth and
  seventh grade (Snow, Burns Griffin, 1998)

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Oral Language and Decoding

• Oral language skills help facilitate acquisition
  of early decoding skills (Connor, Morrison
  Katch, 2004)
• Kindergarten vocabulary level also influences
  phonological awareness, even after controlling
  for parent literacy, invented spelling, listening
  comprehension and alphabetic knowledge (Sénéchal
  et al., 2006)

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Language in the Home

• Student that come from a home with less
  sophisticated language and less frequent
  conversations, come to school with smaller
  vocabularies (Biemiller, 2006)
• The home literacy environment accounts for the
  most variance in emergent literacy skills (Jordon
  et al., 2000)

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Language in the Home

• Children in low SES homes hear fewer than 100
  different vocabulary words in one hour - high SES
  hear over 500 different words (Hart Risley,
  1995)
• Number of words heard by age 3
• Professional - 40 million
• Working class - 20 million
• Welfare - 10 million
• Vocabulary knowledge (White, Graves Slater,
  1990)
• Low SES 3rd graders - 10,000 words
• High SES 3rd graders - 15,000 words

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Workshop 4 Oral Language Having Conversations

• Quick review
• Conversations- an explanation of oral language
  development and how having conversations benefits
  literacy learning.

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Activity for the Session

• Have a conversation with your child about what
  you do at work, or at school or at home while
  your child is at school. Include details
  regarding things you find rewarding, challenging
  or difficult. Ask your child to share his or her
  thoughts on the subject.

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Activity for Home

• As a family, plan an activity that you will do on
  the weekend. Discuss and make a list of things
  to bring.

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Activities for Home

• Build your childs awareness of language by
  checking out and sharing a joke or riddle book
  from the library. If your child does not
  understand why the joke is funny, explain it to
  him.
• Read a book together with your child that has
  been made into a movie. After reading the book,
  watch the movie together. Have a conversation
  about what was the same or different in each.

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Workshop 5 Oral Language/Classroom Tour

• Quick review
• Prior to the event, students and teacher work
  together to construct an agenda that will lead
  the families through the evenings activities.
• Families move throughout the classrooms in a
  planned and organized fashion, according to the
  prepared agenda.

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Workshop 5 Oral Language/Classroom Tour

• When the family is ready to leave, have someone
  take a photo of the family with the teacher.
  After it is developed, post one copy in the
  classroom and send another copy home with the
  child. Have the child write a paragraph that
  explains how learning happens at school and at
  home.

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Workshop 6 Oral Language- Oral Family
Traditions

• Quick Review
• Telling Stories
• Children learn about themselves and others
  through hearing and telling family stories.
• Adults can purposefully use rich language to
  describe family events from the past.

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Activity for the Session

• Make a Timeline
• Parent creates a timeline of his life beginning
  at birth and ending with Today. Through
  conversation, parent adds significant events to
  the timeline.
• Child is encouraged to ask questions as parent
  tells about life events.
• Child illustrates the timeline by drawing
  pictures that represent stories told as the
  timeline was created.

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Workshop 7- Read Alouds

• Teaching method for sharing a story
• Used to develop vocabulary
• Model story structure and reading fluency
• Introducing new content

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Scaffolding of Read Aloud

• Non-readers and emergent readers
• Parents read the story to the child, with the
  child being encouraged to interact and ask
  questions
• Beginning readers
• Parents will read the story to the child, with
  the child be encouraged to read words that he/she
  is familiar with
• More experienced readers
• The child can read to the parents, with the
  parents providing corrective feedback when he/she
  misses a word

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Sample Questions for Read Aloud

• Younger, less proficient readers
• Alphabetic principle questions
• Ask the child to provide the sound that a letter
  makes
• Written conventions
• The parent can point out punctuation to the
  child, and then later ask the child to identify
  commas, periods, etc.

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Workshop 7- Read Alouds

• Older, more proficient readers
• Fluency
• If the child is reading, the parent should help
  the child maintain fluency and use the sentence
  grammar
• Remind the child to pause at the end of a
  sentence and after a comma
• Comprehension
• If there is an idiom or concept that the parent
  does not think the child understands is
  encountered in the text the meaning should be
  discussed

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Probes for Comprehension

• Did this story end the way you thought it would?
• If yes, what clues in the story helped you
  predict what was going to happen?
• If not, how was the ending different than you
  thought it would be?
• What questions do you still have about the story?

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Activity for the Session

• After the overview
• Parents should have an opportunity to ask
  questions
• Parent then models the activity for the group
  with his/her child
• The parent should have volunteered earlier to do
  this, and be familiar with the book
• Other parents in the group can discuss the read
  aloud after the parent is finished
• The session leader (classroom teacher) can
  provide feedback, but it should be framed
  positively

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Workshop 8-Working with Nonfiction Text

• Benefits of Nonfiction Text
• Used to convey information about things in the
  immediate environment and world.
• Help show students how to include factual
  details, vary sentence length and complexity, use
  different language.

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Teacher Demonstration

• The teacher should model an interactive editing
  lesson based on the IAW/IAE book
• The teacher can choose which type of interactive
  editing lesson to do with the parents, but this
  should be the same type that the parents are then
  asked to do with their children later in the
  night.

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Activity for the Session

• The parent should then interactively edit a piece
  of text with their child
• Parents will be given one of the worksheets from
  the IAW/IAE book (depending on the activity the
  teacher has chosen)
• The teacher will provide feedback and support
  during the parent-child activity
• The parent should be encouraged to choose and
  edit another piece of information with their
  child during the month
• The can bring the edited piece to the next family
  literacy night

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Writing

• Reading and writing skills are acquired
  simultaneously, and are equally important in
  emergent literacy (Saint-Laurent Giasson, 2005)
• Writing activities should be introduced early in
  the childs life
• Parents should provide the least amount of
  support necessary

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Parent Support for Writing

• Provide writing material, or could the school
  provide this?
• Promote writing
• Help with editing of writing
• Grammatical correction
• Help the child elaborate on their writing and
  clarify content

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Workshop 9- Writing

• Introduction to Parents
• Writing is a method of communication
• Letter formation and letter writing are the
  beginnings of alphabetic principle
• Writing exits on a continuum
• Parents should be given the developmental stages
  from the Shared Reading book
• Correct letter formation
• Parents receive the handwriting model, which can
  later be used by parents to help model and
  correct their childs letter formation

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Activities for the Session

• For younger children
• Use the handwriting model to write the alphabet
• Parent models the upper and lower case letter
• The child then writes the letter under the model,
  with the parent allowing the child to practice
• For very young children, the letter may look more
  like scribbling
• The session leader should monitor the letter
  writing activity, and help parents use the stages
  of writing handout to assess where the child it
  at.
• Help the parents set reasonable expectations for
  the child
• The child should be allowed to draw a picture to
  go with each letter

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Activities

• Older Children - constructing a letter
• The child should choose someone that he/she knows
  and would like to write a letter to
• After choosing a person to write a letter to, the
  parent should help the child write a letter to
  that person
• Parent should use the handwriting guide and the
  stages of writing handout to help assess the
  child
• The parent can give suggestions for different
  vocabulary,and provide some suggestions
• The child can add illustrations if desired

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Family CELL-ebration Night

• Families bring favorite artifacts to this
  meeting.
• They are given a piece of poster board and tape
  or glue to display their work.
• After writing their names and decorating,
  families display their accomplishments and talk
  about their successes with each other.