This toolkit helps families and schools work together to support children’s literacy success in and out of school.
You will learn:
- Tips for starting or enhancing discussions about literacy instruction and intervention
- Ways to increase your joint understanding of evidence-based literacy practices
- Strategies for addressing concerns about children’s literacy development together
This toolkit includes:
- An Online Tutorial
- Research Briefs & Infographics
- Tools & Resources
- Facilitator's Guides
Get Started
Online Tutorial
In this tutorial, you will learn evidence-based information about family and school partnerships for children’s literacy success, all in an interactive online experience. The tutorial includes a school and family track. You can use the table of contents in each track to learn how to talk and interact often, discuss literacy instruction and intervention, share literacy resources, and address concerns together.
Approximate tutorial length per topic: 30 minutes
Schools and Families can use these checklists to reflect on the item statements related to the tutorial's learning objectives for each section/session and identify next steps. After finishing the tutorial or facilitated workshop series, the completed checklist guide what the individual or team can do as an immediate next step.
Supplemental Materials
Explore these resources with ideas or questions linked to the tutorial.
You and the school share responsibility for your child’s language and literacy learning. Collaborate with your school to make decisions about your child’s literacy education right from the start. Your child benefits when you and the school work together to support her literacy development. Working together promotes faster development and catches trouble spots early.
The way you and families approach home-school interactions and relationships, impacts children’s literacy success.
Regular and positive communication and interaction between you and the school make partnering to support your child’s literacy learning possible.
Regular and positive communication and interaction between you and families make partnering to support children’s literacy learning possible.
You and the school can share literacy resources to help your child and others get evidence-based literacy instruction. Learn to spot questionable or ineffective practices.
You and the school can discuss key assessment tools, rubrics, grading criteria, or strategies to determine together if your child is successful in learning literacy content, skills, or completing an assignment.
You and families can talk about individual children’s literacy profiles and how literacy instruction and intervention are matched to children’s literacy needs.
You and the school can talk about your child’s literacy profile and how literacy instruction and intervention is matched to your child’s literacy needs.
Addressing needs together promotes faster development and catches trouble spots early. Find a solution that you and the school can both support.
Addressing needs together promotes faster development and catches trouble spots early. See if you and families can find a solution that you both can support.
A well-functioning Multi-tiered System of Support for Reading (MTSS-R) collects fidelity of implementation data – including data on family engagement – and uses it to make improvements to the health of the system.
Talk and Interact Often
Families and schools can partner for children’s literacy success by talking and interacting often.
Big Ideas
- Family engagement for children’s literacy learning and achievement is a shared responsibility among families, schools, and communities.
- Trust is the primary ingredient for strong home-school relationships for children’s literacy learning and achievement. Strong home-school relationships rely on open, two-way communication.
- An effective system of support and services for children’s literacy learning involves home and school partnering together.
Visit these Resources to Learn More
Assessment is a process of collecting information. Screening is an assessment process that helps teachers identify students who are at risk for not meeting grade-level learning goals.
This resource explains why engaging in your child's education matters and shares five ways families, teachers, schools and communities can work together to support children's learning and school success, including a reflection exercise.
Topic: Partnerships
This resource explains why engaging in your child's education matters and shares five ways families, teachers, schools and communities can work together to support children's learning and school success, including a reflection exercise.
Topic: Partnerships, Spanish
This resources provides tips for parents on what they can do to promote literacy in a digital environment.
Topic: Partnerships
Partnerships between schools and families can improve students' grades, attendance, persistence, and motivation. Research shows that this is true regardless of a family's race or income.
Topic: Partnerships
If your child is struggling, here are some questions to ask about how the school provides extra help and how you can participate in the process.
Topic: Partnerships
This continuum can be used to assess the cultural norms that currently exist and to think about what changes are needed to create authentic opportunities for partnership that can improve learning conditions and outcomes for historically marginalized populations.
Topic: Partnerships
Here are some steps you can take to develop a strong partnership with your child's teachers.
Topic: Partnerships
Here are some steps you can take to develop a strong partnership with your child's teachers.
Topic: Partnerships, Spanish
Discuss Literacy Instruction and Intervention
Families and schools can partner for children’s literacy success by discussing literacy instruction and intervention.
Big Ideas
- Knowing what scientific research says about how kids learn to read can help you determine if the literacy approach, strategy, or program is evidence-based.
- It is important to identify if the evidence-based literacy practices are appropriate for children’s grade-level or if any key practices are missing.
- Discussing literacy instruction and intervention can help you determine if the literacy approach, strategy, or program is designed and delivered effectively.
Visit these Resources to Learn More
The term evidence-based is defined by the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), as amended by the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). According to ESEA, evidence-based programs are supported by strong, moderate, or promising research evidence of their effectiveness; or they demonstrate a rationale that they can improve a targeted outcome. NCIL supports the implementation of approaches with the highest levels of evidence supported by rigorous evaluations.
The second installment of MCPER's new "10 Key" series, this document distills the latest research findings into 10 easy-to-follow recommendations that states, school districts, and schools can use to improve students' writing outcomes.
Topic: Writing
This document distills the latest research findings into 10 easy-to-follow recommendations that states, school districts, and schools can use to improve elementary students' reading outcomes. Also included are descriptions of what students should know and be able to do at the elementary grade levels.
Topic: Vocabulary, Comprehension, Writing
This handbook describes ten reading practices for middle and high schools with strong evidence of effectiveness from high-quality research, including selected grade level descriptions of what students should know and be able to do.
Topic: Vocabulary, Comprehension, Writing, Adolescent Literacy
This infographic provides an overview of intensive intervention.
Topic: Interventions
This infographic provides tips for parents in supporting their child who is receiving intensive intervention.
Topic: Interventions
This infographic provides questions to ask school teams who are providing intensive intervention.
Topic: Interventions
This guide provides information for kindergarten teachers on how to support families as they practice foundational reading skills at home. It is a companion to the What Works Clearinghouse Foundational Skills to Support Reading for Understanding in Kindergarten Through 3rd Grade.
Topic: Beginning Reading, General Literacy, Evidence-based
This guide provides you with information on how to support families as they practice foundational reading skills at home.
Topic: Partnerships, Beginning Reading
This handout presents strategies for bridging the digital divide during remote learning.
Topic: Partnerships, Remote Learning
Here are sample conversation starters to make it easier to talk with the teacher about reading struggles.
Topic: Partnerships
School teams can use this guide to better understand intensive intervention
and how to engage parents and families with the process.
Topic: Partnerships
The information in this Third Grade Teacher's Guide is designed to assist teachers in supporting out-of-school literacy activities that are aligned to classroom instruction, informed by student need, grounded in evidence-based practices, and facilitated by ongoing parent-teacher communication. The Teacher's Guide provides a framework for literacy support activities presented during schools' family literacy nights and parent-teacher conferences.
Topic: Beginning Reading, Partnerships
To assist you in helping families support literacy, the Georgia Department of Education partnered with the Regional Educational Laboratory Southeast to create a suite of grade-specific Teacher's Guides that certified teachers can use with families to encourage and facilitate literacy support for children at home.
Topic: Professional Development, Partnerships, Beginning Reading
Families and schools can partner for children’s literacy success by sharing literacy resources.
Big Ideas
- Two important foundational skills in early reading instruction are phonemic awareness and phonics.
- For children who struggle to read, working with phonemes and decoding words can be especially difficult.
- Learning to listen, speak, read, and write well also includes developing oral language skills and reading fluently and with meaning.
Visit these Resources to Learn More
Here's what you need to know about decoding, and why it's so important for reading.
Topic: Phonics
Use these seven tips to help improve your child's reading comprehension.
Topic: Comprehension
As children move into higher grades, the texts they read become more complex. Children need to be aware of when their comprehension breaks down and have strategies for learning new information. Here are two evidence-based strategies that parents can use to help their children use comprehension strategies when reading at home.
Topic: Vocabulary, Comprehension
This resource gives four tips for teaching your child about phonemes in order to raise a strong reader and writer.
Topic: Phonological Awareness
This resource gives four tips for teaching your child about phonemes in order to raise a strong reader and writer.
Topic: Phonological Awareness, Spanish
This document provides general guidance for supporting distance learning and MLLs/ELLs.
Topic: Remote Learning, General Literacy
Address Concerns Together
Families and schools can partner for children’s literacy success by addressing concerns together.
Big Ideas
- All children benefit from explicit, systematic reading instruction in phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.
- Some children continue to struggle with reading even with evidence-based classroom reading instruction.
- If you are concerned that a child’s reading difficulties are unexpected or unusual, seek further information from and others about next steps.
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Child Find a legal requirement for schools to find children who have disabilities and need services. Identifying these kids is an important first step toward getting them the help they need to succeed in school.
Topic: Reading Disabilities, Dyslexia
States and jurisdictions must actively identify, locate and evaluate children birth to twenty one who may have disabilities or suspected to have disabilities as early as possible. This process is known as child find.
Topic: Reading Disabilities, Dyslexia
Talking to your child's teacher about dyslexia is important. Here are eight tips to help you have productive conversations.
Topic: Reading Disabilities, Dyslexia
Learning to read is a challenge for many kids, but most can become good readers if they get the right help.These tips can help you recognize when a child is struggling and learn how to find help.
Topic: Reading Disabilities, Dyslexia
Learning to read is a challenge for many kids, but most can become good readers if they get the right help.These tips can help you recognize when a child is struggling and learn how to find help.
Topic: Reading Disabilities, Dyslexia, Spanish
As an educator, you know the importance of collaborative partnerships with families. But when it comes time to talk about a concern you have about a student, it can be hard to know how to start. Keep these things in mind.
Topic: Partnerships
Facilitator's Guides
The purpose of the facilitator's guide is to provide information and materials to effectively facilitate the School track of Families and Schools Partnering for Children’s Literacy Success Tutorial in-person as a workshop series and enable participants to achieve the learning objectives.
The purpose of the facilitator guide is to provide information and materials to effectively facilitate the Family track of Families and Schools Partnering for Children’s Literacy Success Tutorial in-person as a workshop series and enable participants to achieve the learning objectives.
Explore More Toolkits
This toolkit helps parents and families understand the many different skills involved with teaching your child to learn to read and how to support your child's reading development at school and home.
This toolkit helps parents and educators learn about dyslexia and how to support the literacy development of students with dyslexia.
The research reported here is funded by awards to the National Center on Improving Literacy from the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, in partnership with the Office of Special Education Programs (Award #: S283D160003). The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not represent views of OESE, OSEP, or the U.S. Department of Education. Copyright © 2023 National Center on Improving Literacy. https://improvingliteracy.org
