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Across the nation, students struggle with reading. If educators want to help their students, there’s one resource they’ll need to bring in: families.

During the edLeader Panel “The Literacy Breakthrough: Turn Parents into Your Most Powerful Reading Partners,” former educators Rebecca Honig, Chief Content and Curriculum Officer at ParentPowered, and Françoise Lartigue, Director of Content and Curriculum at ParentPowered, had a conversation about tapping into this underutilized resource.

The 5 Pillars of Reading Instruction

Students struggle because reading isn’t an innate ability; rather, it needs explicit, systemic instruction. There are five pillars of that instruction:

1. Phonemic awareness
2. Phonics
3. Fluency
4. Vocabulary
5. Comprehension

Effectively teaching all five requires help at home. Parents and caregivers want to be involved, but they often don’t feel like their help would be welcomed or helpful. If teachers want families involved, they must make it clear that they want that partnership and that families’ everyday actions do help build students’ literacy skills.

Bringing families on as partners means having a shared understanding of the goals and how reading happens. With that understanding in place, teachers can give families activities to work on at home and ask them to engage in literacy-based habits.

Developing Executive Function Skills

Executive function skills are the bedrock of the five pillars of instruction and are perfect for support at home, since developing those skills requires practice in many contexts. Teachers and families can share information to find what works at home to support students. Families should have an understanding of expectations and what the development of different skills looks like at different stages.

Since learning to read can be frustrating at times, families can talk with teachers about what kinds of activities at home help calm their children. Teachers can provide easy and familiar activities to build working memory, as well as stress-management strategies for children to use.

Strengthening the 5 Pillars at Home

Teachers can work with families to find ways to map learning activities into children’s home lives and provide support if needed, making activities more seamless to engage in at home. For example:

• Phonemic awareness—when students learn that words are made of separate sounds and how to play with those sounds—can be reinforced by looking at things families encounter on a walk and saying all the sounds in the names of those things.
• For phonics, which connects sounds to letters and letter combinations and gives students tools to read and write independently, teachers can provide families with supplies and training so they can practice at home.
• Fluency—reading smoothly and with expression—can be supported by having children read aloud to friends and families. Practicing words, doing voices, and using expression are all part of fluency and make it fun for students.
• With vocabulary, students best learn words when words are connected to hands-on experiences, so families can share words connected to their own cultures, jobs, and interests.
• Comprehension, which is built on students being able to sound out and understand words, can be practiced by families asking questions, discussing books, and having conversations with their children.

In addition, teachers should check in with families and ask about reading habits at home and any other helpful observations they’ve made about their children. And, they can collaborate with families to co-design goals. These check-ins can be incorporated into regular correspondence, making them routine and creating ongoing feedback loops that support students both in class and at home.

Teachers and families working together ensures that children receive the support they need to succeed at reading. Learning opportunities at home matter, and families want to help. It’s time to come together to build up a generation of strong readers.

Learn more about this edWeb broadcast, The Literacy Breakthrough: Turn Parents into Your Most Powerful Reading Partners, sponsored by ParentPowered.

Watch the RecordingListen to the Podcast

Join the Community

Community & Family Engagement is a free professional learning community where district and school administrators, teachers, counselors, support staff, and all educators can connect and share ideas, practices, and resources to support students and families and engage the community in helping students learn and thrive.

Research shows that families play a powerful role in fostering children’s development. ParentPowered is on a mission to help K–12 districts provide accessible, evidence-based family engagement curricula, without adding more to teachers’ plates. Our program—for PreK through grade 12—supports, inspires, and activates parents and caregivers with simple, strengths-based insights they can turn into everyday teachable moments. Learn more and request a demo at parentpowered.com.

Article by Jon Scanlon, based on this edLeader Panel