Carlos'+Recommendations+into+Practice

Submitted by Carlos ELAC could have family nights, not just to inform parents about school functions, but they can have a night where they teach parents how to help their children at home with reading. Strategies such as reciprocal teaching; prediction, clarification, questions, and summary, are of great value to master reading comprehension. Another literacy night idea is a reader’s theater show. Here students would be able choose and perform tales or stories from their own culture.


 * Recommendation: Family Literacy Night!**

This recommendation is a response to an area of need portray on chapter 11 in the National Literacy Panel report by August and Shanahan (2006). Language minority families face many obstacles when helping their children at home. It is necessary for schools to help overcome some of the obstacles. This following activity serves this purpose, to help family members to obtain the tools or skills to help their children’s literacy needs at home.



The activity will begin at a central place with all parents in attendance. The principal will greet them and address the importance of family involvement in student’s literary success. Next, the parents will then go to their designated rooms. Most likely they will go to their child’s classroom. However, if the parents don’t speak English, a classroom with their native language (depending on the area) should be available for them.

At the classroom, parents will be trained on reciprocal teaching, an instructional approach. Annmarie Palincsar and Laura Klenk developed Reciprocal Teaching. Here the parents will interactively experience these strategies. The power point can be used as a tool to show the parents the four strategies and their purpose. For parents who don’t speak English, the parents can still help their child by using these strategies in their heritage language. Conversation between the child and the family member is crucial. This strategy can be used before, during, and after reading.


 * Materials needed**

Materials that can be used to practice with parents would be a story from one of the Language Arts book or a chapter or unit from either the Science or Social Studies book. Other materials are pencils, highlighters, and writing paper.


 * Activity**

The teacher will model the activity first. The teacher will predict using the title of the chapter or section and predict what he or she might think what that section of the text will be about. Then the teacher will begin reading the first paragraph. As the teacher reads, he/she begin to ask how or why questions. A sample question might be; How does the environment affect animal’s adaptation? After the teacher reads the first paragraph, he or she will model how to clarify an idea or a section from the paragraph. An example of a clarification would be: Can you clarify the word rotation in the sentence? Last, the teacher will summarize the first paragraph writing on the board the main idea. Finding the main idea can be found by answering this question; What was the paragraph mostly about? After the teacher models the strategies, the parents should be given a piece of paper and a pencil. They will be instructed to predict what the next paragraph would be and write it on the piece of paper. After discussing the predictions the teacher will check for understanding. Then the family members will continue to practice the rest of the strategies with the teacher’s guidance. Finally, the family members will work in pairs modeling each other the strategies. They will switch roles after each has practice a paragraph or section from the text.

At the end, teacher and family members will discuss their feelings, questions, and or concerns they might have. This is just one idea. There could be more family nights throughout the year.

Web based resources

The Center for Multicultural Education at the University of Washington, has a variety of resources that promotes equity and achievement for all students. (http://depts.washington.edu/centerme/recipro.htm)

North Central Regional Educational Laboratory is a site with resources that target many areas. Such: Professional Development, Mathematics, Science, Literacy, School Improvement, Teacher Quality, and Technology in Education. (http://www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/issues/students/atrisk/at6lk38.htm)

Greece Central School District website has this site where reading strategies can be found and used as a resource at home and at school. (http://www.greece.k12.ny.us/instruction/ela/6-12/reading/Reading%20Strategies/reciprocal%20teaching.htm)

In the Dade-Monroe Teacher Education Center, a series of lesson plans can be found that their focus is using Reciprocal Teaching. (http://pers.dadeschools.net/prodev/lesson_plans.htm)

Reference

August, D., & Shanahan, T. (2006). Developing Literacy in Second-Language Learners. Report of the National Literacy Panel on Language-Minority Children and Youth. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.