Choice Lit Topic: Family Relations
Families come in many forms. A good rapport with parents, siblings, and grandparents can make all the difference in building a classroom and school community. Here are some creative suggestions for reaching out to families through conferences, special events, and volunteer opportunities. Our contributors also share the challenges of communicating with parents, and what they’ve learned when they’ve failed to connect.
Results
How Do We Talk with Parents About What It Means to Be Challenged in Reading?
When we meet with the parents of young advanced readers, we begin by using data to show just how much their student knows as a reader. We want the parents...
Creating a Culture of Literacy
My in-laws really love sports. My nephews spent their entire infancies in onesies emblazoned with professional team logos. As soon as they were old enough to get out of their...
Bilingual (English/Spanish) Books that Celebrate Language, Family and Culture
By late summer, I am looking forward to so many things -- meeting students and their families, getting a sense of how they will come together and form a new...
Lessons from Family Writer’s Workshop
While all of our professional instincts told us that hosting writer's workshop with our own children was not the best plan. . . we decided to do it anyway. For...
Talking with Parents about Text Difficulty
Parents want what is best for their children, but often lack understanding of the importance of matching texts to readers. Teachers come to us seeking advice about how to help...
What Reading is Like: Sports Analogies to Use with Parents
Parent conferences are just around the corner in many schools, and families are eager to learn about their child's growth and needs as readers. We often use sports analogies to...
What My Son’s Reading Difficulties Taught Me About Teaching Struggling Readers
My eight-year-old son struggled while learning to read. The process of understanding how to figure out unfamiliar words on the page was painful. I felt that I had done everything...
Rethinking Reading at Home
We struggle every year with the question of whether to have students fill out logs for the reading they do at home. On one hand, we want students to read...
Questions and Answers about Home Reading Logs
It's so helpful when we can take the time to think about the work we do with children. It's even more helpful when people ask questions and probe. I recently...
On Not Fretting
This morning, I was fretting. Cleaning my desk, I misplaced writing I was going to share with colleagues after school. The day ahead already began to seem scattered and rushed,...
Literacy Builds Community: The Jackdaw Project
To quote a former principal of mine, "School is not summer camp." This phrase kept playing over and over in my mind as I began thinking about the beginning of...
Helping Classroom Volunteers Become Better Listeners
In my school, asking students questions when the answer is already known by the questioner was a common practice. Frustrated by these conversations, I decided to see what might happen...
Many Languages, Many Texts: Book Time in Preschool
In this brief video, Melissa Kolb explains "Book Time" in her preschool class. It's a time when many volunteers read books informally to small groups of children in their home...
Family Dichos: Bringing the Language of Home into the Classroom
A friend and colleague, Espie dela Vega, mentioned a dicho that guided her and her family as she was growing up: En cada cabeza, el mundo. When someone acted differently, or in...
Creative Literacy Events for Families
If your program for families has been centered on a few tried-and-true events you rarely vary over the years, you might want to mix it up with a new event...
Letters from Home: Letting Families and Friends Teach Us
To send a letter is a good way to go somewhere without moving anything but your heart. Phyllis Theroux We've found one of the most enjoyable ways to...
Honor Books: Helping Children and Families Build Bridges Between Home and School
The students I teach come from home environments of limited resources, but their years of family and life experiences are rich. Many of these families only recently immigrated to America,...
Family Survey: Report Cards and Evaluations (SURVEY)
Before you begin the arduous process of writing report card comments and evaluation narratives for your students, it helps to know a little bit about the audience for your words...
My Son Clark Kent
The day my son Alec was born I read him Jules Feiffer's Bark, George in the hospital. It was a gift from my cousin, who taught me the importance of daily reading...
Helping Young Readers Understand the Middle East: A Booklist of the Best Fiction Picture Books
I still remember the first time I read Day of Ahmed's Secret. I showed the book to colleagues and friends, telling them, "He looks just like my uncle Girgi! " or...
Alphabet Books for English Language Learners
Five-year-old Bao Jun lived two-thirds of her young life in China, then moved to Portland, Oregon. On the first day of kindergarten, her mother told me, "You say, she understand....
