Family Partnerships

Chapter 10 focuses on family literacy partnerships. One section that interested me was to to involve families in your literacy program: what teachers can do for all parents. I was interested in this section because it is important that teachers view parents as partners in the development of literacy and be responsible to inform families on a regular basis about what is happening in school and how they can help their child. The book says that teachers need to involve family members in activities at home and in school and make them feel like partners in the education of their child. I think this extremely important. It is crucial that teachers have the parents trust and make them aware of what is going on in their child's life at school. By making the parents feel comfortable enough to talk and share feelings can allow for an open relationship will give parents the opportunity to give input about what they would like their child to learn, to express how they feel about what happens in school, and to offer suggestions.The parents will also feel safe enough when they talk to the teacher to let them know if when they have different feelings.

The textbook also listed several suggestions about ways to make families an integral part of the school. The suggestions listed on page 436 all have something to do with including families helping and watching the student as he/she does his/her homework.   One suggestion I found extremely important is to send home notes when a child is doing well. Don't wait to send notes just for problems. I think it is important to get parents on the educators side so that there is a good relationship and communication between parent and teacher.  The book suggested that family members should be invited to school to participate with their children in literacy activities. I recently talked to a teacher at a daycare and her child attends a school near by. The teacher and I talked about how parents come into the daycare and talk to teachers and they are comfortable with one another, but the teacher then said that she has not talked or heard from her daughters teacher and that they do not have a relationship. Instead, the daycare teacher that I talked to said that she can check her child's behavior on an app and see if she has good point or bad points.

This section in chapter 10 focused mostly on including families in the child's school life. Instead of just having the parents involved in the child's academic life at home, I think it is important that parents are involved in the school as well. Having family involvement activities several times a year is a great way to provide opportunities for children to bond with their own families and other families. The book gave some examples: theme night, cooking night, book sharing evenings, sharing family photos, or having a family fun night. Schools in my area have a family fun night once a year on a Friday night. During this time families come to the school and participate in games and different events.

Authentic Family Literacy

While reading this chapter it kind of made me sad that family literacy only got one chapter of this book. I think family literacy is such an important aspect of literacy that a lot of parents look over! Last semester, I was in an immersive course where we paired with Minnetrista to create family literacy days that provided critical thinking. I think sometimes with family literacy, you can incorporate it into activities without even realizing it! An example would be having the student and their parent read a book together and discuss connections they both could make to the story! Things as simple as that can be considered family literacy. I think something that educators and parents get confused is that family literacy should be an experience that the student does not get in school. It needs to be an activity that the child wouldn't do in a traditional classroom. This is where teachers don't know what to do! How can you plan family literacy activities for your children if it isn't done in the classroom at school? Does anyone have any good ideas for a family literacy activity that promotes critical thinking and also gives the parent and the student an authentic experience?

Looking back to my house, I realized how great my mom was at creating family literacy events! She was a kindergarten teacher before she stayed home to raise her kids, so I now realize all of the little things she did to promote literacy in our home. We had checklists for everything! Grocery lists, cleaning day, errands to run, night-time routines. You can literally name something off and she would have us help her create a list for it! We also rode our bikes to the library a lot during the summer. She even drove us all the way to Ohio for a living history museum just for fun! All of these activities were so much fun! I think that's where parents struggle with their children is that they think of literacy and automatically think "Oh well that's just going to be them reading before bed." You can make literacy fun! I loved all of the examples and charts that this book gives. I think this book could be useful for parents, not just teachers because of the resources it provides! Did anyone else have an experience like mine growing up? If so, did you feel like your mom or dad intentionally did those things or was it just a coincidence? Looking back, I think my mom intentionally planned these activities without telling us to show us literacy in our every day lives.

Literacy In The Home

This section in Chapter 10 caught my attention as it described literacy development in the home I couldn't help but to think of my house growing up. As I think of all the different rooms in our house, there was something to read kept in each room. In the living room there are several book shelves that always had books for me to read as a kid at eye level. Then in the kitchen there were always my own kids cookbooks that I could read and play along with my mom as she made dinner. From room to room through out my house there was always kids books kept out that I could reach at all times. This book selection was constantly changing. This development was not limited to print, but also writing. Since I can remember as a child the basement walls have been painted with chalkboard paint on the walls. This way we could write freely, and is where my mom spent countless hours working with me as I learned how to write. 

For a literacy environment that is successful within the home the text recommends that books should be associated with pleasure and literacy activities should be rewards. The home should be well organized with daily activities. The setting within the home should have social interactions between both adults and children; socially, emotionally, and intellectually. Children who come from these homes express early interest in reading and writing when these materials are accessible within their homes. When these children get to school age they are rated higher than average in social and emotional maturity, work habits, and general school achievements by their teachers.

The following websites are great advice for how to help your home promote literacy development:

Literacy Development Begins at Home, With a Literate Home Environment

Suggestions for Promoting Literacy Development: Toddlers and Preschoolers

What You Can Do at Home

Literacy Rich Classroom

Although this video is for pre-k, I thought it was a wonderful example of a literacy rich classroom. It gives us a tour of the room and shows all the great things this teacher is doing for their students to enrich their literacy experience. The room seems to be quite organized and during the video, they show the dramatic play area, which is specifically used to mimic a doctors office. This classroom/video contains many of the elements that we've learned are important in a literacy rich classroom and I think that this video is a great tool to provide inspiration for building your own classrooms literacy centers. As Marie mentioned in her blog post, "Simply providing students will literacy rich daily activities is not enough. Providing a literacy rich environment that supports literacy activates and materials is even more beneficial in the since that the physical environment models literacy 24/7. Students will, with out feeling pressured, find themselves practicing literacy without realizing it." She emphasizes how important it is for students to have this literacy rich environment in order to succeed. Modeling your classroom, or taking reference for your classroom from this video is a step in the right direction.

LIteracy-Rich Physical Environments

Literacy-rich environment emphasized the importance of speaking, reading, and writing in the learning of all students. This involves the selection of materials that will facilitate language and literacy opportunities, reflection and thought regarding classroom design, and intentional instruction and facilitation by teachers and staff. In the link below, there is a great checklist that a teacher can follow to make sure they create the most beneficial literacy-rich environment they can.

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&ved=0CCwQFjAC&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.iup.edu%2FWorkArea%2FDownloadAsset.aspx%3Fid%3D142995&ei=SD0tVbDNE8qWNqy5gZgB&usg=AFQjCNGnWtBUF3WSLY4P87GCuHeBG63eGQ&sig2=3lR6U3EPWMoGxtOq6ELlow

By purposefully arranging the space and materials, teachers can create a physical environment that exert an active, positive, and strong influence on instruction.

Q&A about managing and organizing literacy within the classroom

http://web.uvic.ca/~gtreloar/20%20Latest%20Research%20Articles/Organizing%20Literacy%20Classrooms%20for%20Effective%20Instruction.pdf

The link I have posted is one that I found very helpful. The link will take you to a website that
that provides an article entitled "Organizing Literacy Classroom for Effective Instruction" This article proves to be very beneficial because it contains background information as well as provides several questions within the article such as "Question 1: What do I do to organize my physical classroom environment to support literacy instruction?" It first poses good questions for teachers to ask themselves but then proceeds to answer the question with great detail as well as providing visuals along the way. The remainder of the article is set up in a question and answer format providing information and research to support the answers to the question. Some of the information I came across while reading even went along with the video we watched in class today. For example the article states that "wall displays are most effective when students and teachers coproduce these. Consequently, classroom wall spaces need not be filled on the first day of school" this went along with what the video talked about how what the teacher hung up wasn't just cute but it was meaningful and tended to stay up for the remainder of the year for references. This article proved very interesting and helpful to read and contained a lot of valuable and useful techniques.

Chapter 9 searcher; Tips and examples for literacy rich classrooms

These two videos deal with providing and creating literacy rich classroom environments for students! The first video gives pictures and ideas about how to create this literacy rich environment and I think the pictures of different classrooms help to spark ideas on how to arrange your classroom for most efficient use of space to promote literacy. The second video talks more about what should be included in your literacy rich classroom, how it can be arranged and the importance of having options for different students. In one first reader post, it talked about how classrooms can be small and it is hard to fit all the essential literacy centers into the classroom, but I think these two videos give some good insight to arranging literacy centers in classrooms. They also talk about the importance of having a variety of activities for students such as individual reading corners, classroom libraries, writing centers, books on tape, and more to choose from while still getting literacy instruction. I think these videos could be quite helpful when starting to design and create your differentiated literacy areas in your own classroom!