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Lessons Learned in earLy reading First

Strengthening the Home-School Connection

Substantial research shows that family involvement in a preschooler’s education has a significant impact on a child’s cognitive and social development. Studies also show that the benefits of strong home-

school relationships in the early years persist over time and that this relationship can buffer the negative impacts of poverty on the academic and behavioral outcomes of poor children.1

Encouraging literacy activities at home, particularly the reading of books, enriches a child’s vocabulary, which plays a key role in a child’s future success in school. In a seminal longitudinal study, researchers Betty Hart and Todd R. Risley found that young children from lower economic circumstances hear fewer than 100 different vocabulary in an hour com-pared with 500 in more affluent families. The academic gap, they conclud-ed, begins long before kindergarten.2

To encourage family involvement at Ready to Learn Providence’s Early Reading First sites, and to extend children’s literacy development at home, several ongoing activities were put in place, all receiving a positive response from parents, teachers and children. Here are some of the most successful efforts.

We all know the value of conversations between families and teachers, but scheduling frequent formal meetings is often unrealistic given the busy schedules of most parents. At Early

Reading First we found that engaging in short purposeful exchanges with parents when they dropped off or picked up their child were more practi-cal and productive.

These meetings can take just five or ten minutes, but if a teacher is prepared to talk with a parent about a specific skill a child is working on, and an activity that will reinforce that skill at home, they can be highly useful. These conversations update families on what is happening in the classroom and involve them in the education of their children. Research tells us that parents who become engaged in the preschool years tend to remain involved in their child’s education later on.

The Literacy Kits and Family Lending Libraries described on the next few pages facilitate a Meet and Greet because teachers can demonstrate a specific activity a parent can do at home or suggest a book that a child might enjoy sharing with his family.

Meet and Greets

Stocking a library on a tight budgetAt each site libraries stocked with high-quality children’s books were set up

for use by families and children. Children and families were encouraged to sign out books from these libraries to take home.

These libraries were separate from the collection of books used in the class-room, although some titles were duplicated. Teachers found that many children enjoyed sharing the books read in class with their families.

Depending on the space and requirements of the different centers, some family libraries were set up in the classrooms while others were centralized in a separate location or placed on mobile shelves. Each library held about 100 children’s books in English and Spanish, all purchased with ERF funds. To keep the titles fresh, classrooms rotated their collections periodically throughout the year.

Centers and classrooms adopted various methods for signing out books, but one method proved particularly easy for children to use: A pocket glued to the back of each book holds a laminated card with a google image of the book’s cover. When children want to take a book home, they simply put the laminated card into their pocket in a sign-out book, which has a page (and a pocket) for each child.

The family libraries are available to children and families daily. Interestingly, many of the children who don’t normally choose the classroom book corner dur-ing free choice now like to “sign out” a book in the family library and share it with a friend. With multiple opportunities to check out favorite titles, family members have noted how their child can now “read” these books to them.

Teachers found that the family libraries at the ERF sites were well used and played a large role in strengthening the home-school relationship. At one site, some 500 books were checked out from its three lending libraries over the course of a year. Teachers say the books a child reads at home often trigger meaningful conversations between them and family members about the child’s interests and skill level. And in several cases, a child’s enthusiasm about the at-home reading of a particular book prompted teachers to invite a parent or grandparent to read the book to the entire class.

Family Lending Libraries

Source: Hart, B., & Risley, T.R. (1995). Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experiences of Young Ameri-can Children, Baltimore: Brookes.

(Endnotes)

1 Family Involvement in Early Childhood Education, Harvard Family Research Project, Harvard Graduate School of Education, p.3.2Hart, B., & Risley, T.R. (1995). Meaningful Differences in the Ev-eryday Experiences of Young American Children, Baltimore: Brookes.

When budgets are already

stretched tight, stocking a fam-

ily lending library could be seen as a

luxury. Here are some resources to

help you get started.

Scholastic has a program called

Scholastic Literacy Partnerships that

provides deep discounts on a wide

range of quality paperback and board

books, as well as free bonus books.

Any nonprofit, state agency, commu-

nity organization or corporation that

is engaged in distributing books to

children and/or their families free of

charge is eligible to join. Go to http://

teacher.scholastic.com/products/lit-

eracypartnerships/about.asp for more

information.

Many organizations, such as Read-

ing Is Fundamental (www.rif.org),

have donation programs to help get

books in the hands of children. Here

are other web sites we found using a

search engine:

http://www.firstbook.org

http://www.albany.edu~dlafonde/

Global/bookdonation.htm

Check with your local library to see

if it holds a used-book sale. Yard sales

are another good source.

The Building 19 stores usually have

a nice selection of heavily discounted

children’s books.

Once you get your library up and

running, it’s highly likely that families

in your program will want to donate a

book or two that no longer holds their

child’s interest. Labels in the inside

cover identifying the donor are a nice

way to recognize the gift and give

families a vested interest in this effort.

In the summer of 2007, Ready to Learn Providence piloted a program designed to tighten the

home-school connection at its ERF sites. Nine AmeriCorps graduates – all of whom had spent two years in the R2LP program – were hired to serve as home-school liaisons. To encourage family involvement and to reinforce literacy skills, the liaisons put together kits filled with games, books and ac-tivities that children could borrow and enjoy at home. Prior to sending the kits home each week, liaisons met with the children and their parents to explain the activity and the objective.

The 164 kits created over the course of the summer were based on each child’s Personal Literacy Plan, the Build-ing Language for Literacy Curriculum, and the Rhode Island Early Learning Standards. Through “Meet and Greets,” home visits, phone calls and informal conversations, the liaisons had contact with parents 675 times over the course of the summer. Child contacts and ob-servations totaled well over 5,000.

Parents expressed much apprecia-tion for the kits and the direction they received, according to the liaisons. “This really worked,” many would say when returning the materials. Parents also said they’d like to see the program extended

Take-Home Literacy Kits

The games and activities included in the literacy

kits are easy to assemble and require only inexpensive ma-terials. At the ERF sites, sturdy plastic bags with zippers hold the different kits.

To get you started, we've replicated an activity used at ERF centers on the back page of this handout. And below is an idea for a game that families can play in the car. (For other ideas, go to http://www.ride.ri.gov/els/family.asp and down-load the Fun Family Activity Kit in English or Spanish.)

Go through magazines and cut out pictures containing words you’re likely to see along the road – a stop sign, for ex-ample, or the name of a famil-iar restaurant or store. Paste them onto individual index cards. Children see how many “matches” they can make when riding in the car. For children not ready to recognize words, matching logos is a good skill.

Getting startedyear-round.

The ERF sites are in fact using the literacy kits year-round, but without the additional staffing of the pilot program. Families can sign out the kits to use at home to reinforce skills – through games and other entertaining activities – that their children are learning in the classroom. Many of these activities are designed to fit into a family’s daily rou-tine – while shopping, for example. The kits give families a chance to participate in the education of their children and to more fully understand the skills they need for success.

In some cases the activities relate to a book that families can find in the lending libraries described on the op-posite page.

Ready to LeaRn PRovidence, a program of The Providence Plan, has a vision that all children will have high-quality early education and a healthy start. It improves the educational and health outcomes of young children in Rhode Island through professional development, community engagement, research and direct service.

In 2004 R2LP received a $2.9 million, three-year federal grant to create centers of educa-tional excellence through Early Reading First. ERF is designed to change teacher practice as well as outcomes for children. In 2006 and 2009 R2LP received a second and third ERF grant to work with additional centers for three years.

Funding for this publication was provided by a U.S. Department of Educa-tion, Early Reading First grant. The content is solely the responsibility of R2LP and does not represent the official views of USDOE nor constitute an endorse-ment by the funding agency.

For more information on Ready to Learn Providence, go to its website at www.r2lp.org.