This page is for parents and teachers. The information will be ideas for how to create a partnership between school and home.
These are a few activities that can create on how to create a Home-Literacy Connection:
Interactive Read-Alouds
These interactions should boost children's engagement with books, such as making predictions and connections, asking questions, and talking about the illustrations.
Family Reading/Writing Nights
Most schools host these events for families to come together and enjoy reading and writing activities.
Traveling Book Bags*
These are books the students have read in class and they bring it home to read to their parents.
(Ethan has these book bags and a reading log that he brings home every day.)
For older students, developmentally appropriate, sophisticated (mainly NF)books, that include maps, brochures, charts and diagrams, magazines (I like this idea because they always want to check these out), lists of related websites, and books related to thematic units.
~In my class, we had an American Indian unit and they loved learning about them and they were working in partners and had to compare the Indians. They were allowed to check out more of these books at the library.
Family Book Clubs*
Collaborating with other families with books that they are reading together. (I LOVE THIS IDEA!) Neighborhood schools would really benefit from this approach, because it brings the community together to read. Also this models to the children, how adults have conversations about books.
Family Journals*
Students and parents write back and forth to each other. The students write their entries at school and the parents respond to it. **Love this idea**
Family Literacy Portfolios*
This is another great idea to bring that home-school connection.
We have a collection of school samples from the boys, but I never thought about having one specifically to share with their teachers. The parents keep a portfolio, large manila folder, of writings, drawings, written observations, and present the portfolio to their child's teacher at a parent/teacher conference.
I like this idea because it has a true sense of collaboration.
These ideas came from Literacy in the 21st Century by Gail E. Tompkins.*
