The Home-School Connection: Supporting Home Reading

Tuesday, 12 January 2010 at 3:36 pm

Assisting Parents and Caregivers to Support Home Reading

Teachers know that parents make a world of difference to children’s literacy development and that support at home is crucial to developing attitudes to reading as well as practising and applying reading skills and knowledge.

As we move into the new year, schools will schedule parent information sessions to provide important insights about routines and procedures, expectations for learning and ways parents can assist at home.

These sessions provide valuable opportunities to assist parents and caregivers to understand the importance of reading outside the classroom and to practise literacy within and across real life contexts. They also help parents and care givers to understand their vital link in supporting the ongoing literacy success of students.

Teachers are able to clearly outline the purpose of home reading, the importance of considered text choice (particularly in the early years when text levels may be evident on reading books) and tips for supporting the challenges readers face on different texts. Supporting parents to know what to say before, during and after reading is both empowering for parents and heightens enjoyment for both parties. These strategies are outlined at length in our Novice to Ninja reading workshop. To read more about text choice, visit our post, Why ‘poor’ literary texts can be a good read for children.

Some schools take the reading challenge so seriously that all parents are urged to attend the parent information session, which begins with an address to all parents about how and why to support reading at home.

Literacy Solutions offers a 30 minute whole school parent address from $250 +GST or 2 x 30 minute reading addresses (i.e. 1 x 30 minute P-2 and 1 x 30 minute Year 3-7 address, run consecutively) from $425 +GST. Please contact us to enquire.

by Angela Ehmer

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