Children connect with stories and themes that they know. If something is recognizable to them in a book, they will often relate to it in a way that draws similarities to the people and events in their own lives. Through this familiarity, reading becomes more enjoyable and serves a stronger purpose towards promoting successful literacy outcomes. Teachers who work with … Read More
Measuring Parent Engagement for Success
Parent engagement helps students to succeed academically and helps schools to serve students more effectively. Encouraging, assessing, and measuring parent engagement are all important elements of a successful parent engagement initiative. Parent engagement can be measured in various ways; through parent surveys and questionnaires, measurements of attendance counts at family-school events, and assessments of the number and quality of these … Read More
Bilingual Books: The Secret Recipe for Family Literacy with Hispanics
Literacy begins in the home. Parents who begin to read to their children from a very young age make great strides in the child’s educational and social evolution later on. Reading to a child promotes successful outcomes for literacy even before they start their first day of kindergarten. This is true for families of all languages, backgrounds and cultures. For … Read More
Parental Involvement and the Impact on School Success
There is a little debate that a parent’s engagement in a child’s learning is highly beneficial. A number of studies have shown the extent of the positive impacts that healthy parental involvement can provide with marked improvements in attendance, behavioral patterns, and social skills, as well as better grades and test scores, resulting in higher graduation rates. But distinguishing the … Read More
How Can Parents Help Kids Maintain Their Home Language and Learn English too?
Research shows that continuing to use home languages alongside their new language acquisition will make the process of learning English faster and easier. One of the first steps you can take is to embrace and celebrate your child’s bilingualism as a strength that will serve them well throughout their lives in our increasingly diverse and multicultural world. Here are two … Read More
Reaching Out to Hispanic Parents to Improve Family Reading
The most important skill that a student can learn is how to read. Learning to read becomes the avenue to all other academic skills and successes. Becoming a reader is an easier process when parents are involved. This is especially true for English language learners whose parents are primarily Spanish speakers. In essence, the key to parent involvement for English … Read More