Family Literacy

This workshop suggests strategies, content, rationales, and resources for building relationships with key stakeholders in your school community. Each topic addresses a different stakeholder group.

PreK-12 school librarians can be leaders in working collaboratively to close the early childhood literacy gap. Parents, family, and community members who talk, sing, play, and read to infants and young children prepare them for success in school and in life. In a series of vignettes, elementary and secondary librarians share how they are collaborating to help ensure that all children have a strong start in literacy learning.

I knew that I was missing an important group of stakeholders for our school: our parents. Understanding the importance of parental involvement in the development of reading skills, I created a new outreach program called "Family Afternoon Reading Fun."

Children who hear a lot of words in their very first years of life come to learn, speak, and read language more quickly then children who do not.

As school librarian, I actively work to reach out to ELL families and welcome them into our building in a number of formal and informal ways. As the school's cultural and educational hub, the library is in a unique position to accommodate ELL families and help create a schoolwide culture of support.

I want my middle school students to check out Book Ambassador bags of materials to take home and read to their brothers and sisters. I hope to accomplish two goals. The first is that the younger students will experience the joy and love that being read to brings while also building their literacy. The second is that the middle school students will be improving their vocabulary and fluency as they read the books aloud.

Looking for a fun family reading promotion? In this article, Leslie Preddy describes the process from planning to evaluating for hosting a Family Read-In at her school.