Family Literacy Program

https://www1.maine.gov/education/meflit/Successful%20Strategies%20(full%20version).pdf

This pdf talks about different strategies that can be implemented by a family to help their children extend on their literacy growth at home. It explains the importance of family literacy programs and even explains how you can start your very own program in your household. As a future teacher and parent I would recommend this paper as a reference on different family literacy ideas that your students families can implement or you yourself can. This paper also helps identify if the program is worthwhile or not and how the child is doing during the program.  

Family Literacy

http://www.familieslearning.org/

Since this chapter is about family literacy, I think this website is a perfect resource. This is the website for the National Center for Families Learning. This website states that the NCFL works to strengthen and broaden their approaches to family literacy. It talks about programs that NCFL has started, has tools and family resources, and so much more.

http://www.reading.org/downloads/parents/pb1044_involved.pdf

This is a pdf that explains what family literacy is. It also talks about programs and how to implement family literacy from infants to high school.

Connecting Home and School

In chapter ten, the author discussed ways that a child's home life and their school life can be connected. Parents are not always willing to help their children and see it as more of a chore. This chapter give great examples of how we can see it as a privilege. As educators, we want to bridge the gap between school and home. This website gives great examples of how parents and school can be related. We want parents to realize that it is not hard to be involved in your child's school life. Whether they realize it or not, they may already be helping their child succeed in school. This website is a perfect resource for not only parents but also educators to share with the parents of their students.

Literacy Resources for Families

I feel that there are a lot of resources for families these days that can assist them in encouraging their child's relationship with literacy.  This chapter emphasized that as teachers we need to be understanding of all families.  This is because there may be some families who have the time to sit down every night and work on literacy with their children while other families may not even see each other aside from 10 minutes before their children go to bed.  With technology advancing the majority of resources for families is online.  I found two websites that I think would help families with literacy at home.  Scholastic is a great resource in general, their parent page provides daily tips for parents to assist their children in literacy at home.  The National Children's Literacy Website provides strategies and other resources for parents to assist their children in literacy at home. 

http://www.scholastic.com/parents/
http://www.child2000.org/lit-tipsMenu.htm

Managing Literacy Centers

This is a blog that I found that is all about how one teacher runs and manages a literacy block and center all on her own with no adult help. This blog has some great advice and information on how to manage your classroom while using literacy centers as well as how to implement a literacy center. These are all just suggestions and accounts of how one teacher manages her own classroom. As such there are many different ways to accomplish this difficult task but I think that this teacher has some great ideas.
http://www.heidisongs.com/blog/2013/07/managing-literacy-centers-with-no-adult.html

Family + Literacy

Since this chapter is about family literacy, I would like to start off with a question: how did your parents help you with your literacy skills when you were younger? Did they read to you at bedtime? Did they practice spelling words with you? What does family literacy mean to you in your own words?

            The statement from pg. 419, “family members who care for children are children’s first teachers” could not be anymore true. This is why I think it is so important that parents know exactly what is going on in the classroom so they can help their children if need be.

            Did anyone have a lot of books at home when they were little? Did you have a house that promoted literacy? In the chapter it talks about a girl who began to read on her own because of what was exposed to her in her house- “because of her constant exposure to books and print from birth, she developed a large sight vocabulary and a number of reading skills.” As teachers, we can make this possible for our students by providing numerous amounts of print and books.

            If you were giving advice to a parent in regards to how they should promote literacy in their home, what would you say? How would you go about explaining how important it is?

            I would definitely remember some of the strategies listed in this chapter on how to promote literacy at home. I especially liked the “top 10 things to do with your child at home” list. Which strategy was your favorite? 

Literacy Partnerships: Home and School

“Children are made readers on the laps of their parents.” 
 - Emilie Buchwald

I found this quote and thought how appropriate it was to this chapter. I don't remember being read to as a child, I just remember always reading. I knew that when we had children, that they would be read to all the time. Jeff and I have always read to the kids, even after they could read themselves they still enjoyed (and still do) being read to. Can not imagine not having a love for books and reading. That is why I really liked that this chapter had ideas to bridge the gap from literacy in the classroom to home.

In this chapter it says "But if we get to three parents, we have helped three families and then another and another and another. Each little success must be looked on as a large one, and we go forward from there." As teachers we will have days when we feel that the parents are not "doing their part" in helping their child to succeed. But you can never tell when you will encourage a parent to get more involved. 

On page 432 it said that it is important to for family members to just sit with each other with their own book and read. Then said that "Talking about what family members are reading is an important experience as well." I know of a number of families that do this (ours included) and if you start talking while everyone is reading you get hushed. If your students family is starting to have family reading time, having everyone give a brief summary/description of what they are/have read is a great idea.

Something that I want to include in my classroom is the backpack activity. It would be tied to our unit or theme at that time and students and families could "check out" the pack for a few days then they would be ready when the theme changed. Also would like to have parents in at the end of our unit/theme studies. Thinking we would set the classroom up and have booths and students would "guide" their parents around and explain each one. There would also be activities that they would do together.

What strategies or ideas from this chapter do you think you would want to incorporate in your classroom? Were you read to as a child?