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
A School Library Can Support ELL Families
Libraries have historically been multi-faceted organizations which offer not only books and media, but access to community programs and cultural experiences. There is now a growing trend in public schools in which school librarians, classroom teachers, and ELL teachers are using the library as a meeting and activity venue for ELL families. It can be challenging for ELL parents and … Read More
State of Arizona Informational ELL Resources
The state of Arizona had 91,382 ELL students enrolled in grades K-12 during the 2012-13 academic year, making up 8.4% of the school population. Among those children, Spanish was spoken by a large majority at 70.5%, with Arabic, Navajo, Vietnamese, and Somali making up the balance of the top five languages currently spoken by non-English speaking students. The following is … Read More