Research shows that children who are chronically absent from school — missing 10 percent of the school year or more (about 18 days) for any reason — in kindergarten and first grade are far less likely to read well by the end of third grade. To make progress on attendance, the guide recommends that communities focus on helping parents strengthen these competencies: recognize and address health needs and environmental hazards in the home; monitor absences and seek support at the earliest signs of attendance issues; and establish an expectation and a plan for daily school attendance, even when families move.
Created with the help of practitioners who have worked successfully with families to improve attendance, this toolkit is filled with ideas, activities and materials that you can use to spark conversations with parents about how good attendance can help them fulfill their dreams and aspirations for their children’s futures.
Researchers have found that children begin to learn reading and writing at home, long before they go to school. This booklet for parents summarizes the most important research findings, defines important terms, and lists reading skills that kids at different ages are developing.
This booklet offers advice for parents of children from grades K-3 on how to support reading development at home and how to recognize effective instruction in their children’s classrooms.
By taking the time to read with their children, fathers can play an important role in helping children learn to read. Dad’s Playbook tells the stories of 20 dads from different walks of life who are giving their kids the best shot at a bright future by helping them learn to read. This publication also teaches dads about the five skills children need to be readers by third grade and helps them incorporate reading into everyday activities.
From the moment your child is born, there are simple things you can do to help him or her become a good reader. This guide helps parents build a child’s early reading skills at home, recognize signs of trouble, support the child as they enter school, understand options for extra support, and recognize when parents need to go outside the school for help.
This booklet outlines the reading and language skills that children develop at different ages and suggests activities to help develop these skills — activities that every family can try and that are fun for both caregivers and children.
Our colorful bilingual Family Guide includes tips for helping children get the most out of reading as well as pointers on working with schools and teachers, ideas for using the public library, and more. Available in Spanish, Hmong, and Somali.
This 12-page booklet for parents and caregivers describes key skill areas children need to develop to become lifelong enthusiastic learners and what adults can do to support that development.
This booklet (in English and Spanish) features dozens of fun activities parents can use to build the language skills of young children from birth to age 6. It has a reading checklist, typical language accomplishments for different age groups, and resources for children with reading problems or learning disabilities.
This classroom resource guide highlights solutions for connecting home and school in order to improve student learning and success. Whether you’re a teacher, parent, or district administrator, this guide provides you with relevant and valuable tools and resources for how best to strengthen the bonds between schools, families, and communities for student learning and success.
This practice guide provides you with information on how to support families as they practice foundational reading skills at home. Learning to read begins at home through everyday parent–child interactions, long before children attend school. Parents’ continuing support of literacy development throughout elementary school positively affects their children’s reading ability. This guide is geared towards kindergarten teachers and is a companion to the practice guide, Foundational Skills to Support Reading for Understanding in Kindergarten Through 3rd Grade.
This guide for parents provides basic information about Response to Intervention (RTI), an example of the three-tier model, progress monitoring, RTI and special education evaluation and eligibility, RTI in action, and questions parents should ask.
This guide was developed by teachers, parents, and education experts in response to the Common Core State Standards that more than 45 states have adopted. Created for grades K-8 and high school English, language arts/literacy and mathematics, the guides provide clear, consistent expectations for what students should be learning at each grade in order to be prepared for college and career.
Parent–teacher conferences are an important component of ongoing home–school communication and family involvement in children’s education. These three tip sheets — for principals, teachers, and parents — can help ensure that parent–teacher conferences achieve their maximum potential by providing guidance that reflects each person’s role and responsibility in promoting productive home–school communication. Designed to be used as a set, the tip sheets combine consistent information with targeted suggestions, so that parents and educators enter into conferences with shared expectations and an increased ability to work together to improve children’s educational outcomes.
This guide focuses on three key school readiness areas: social-emotional and executive function skills (enabling children to plan, focus attention, remember instructions and juggle several tasks), early literacy, and the health determinants of early school success. To help parents strengthen three competencies, the guide includes these recommendations: engage in nurturing and affirming “back and forth” interactions; enrich their child’s vocabulary and promote a love of reading; and track and assess progress toward early developmental milestones.
Parents are a child’s first and most important teacher. This series of booklets gives parents easy-to-adapt ideas on how to help their young child get ready to read. Each booklet includes a story that models effective ways to introduce books and reading to a young child, suggested activities, and a checklist to guide parents as they think about their child’s reading skills.
Any effort to increase third-grade reading proficiency should maximize the summer months as a time to catch up, stay on track, and remain healthy. Equipped with the right information, tools, and supports, parents can make sure their children have healthy and enriching summers. The guide includes these recommendations to support summer learning: engage children in enriching summer activities at home or in the community; use technology to facilitate ongoing learning, especially during the summer; and encourage, support, and model healthy eating and fitness.
This toolkit includes background information on reaching out to Hispanic parents, four sample workshops, videos in Spanish and English, booklists, and bilingual handouts. Additions to the toolkit include a new parent workshop on helping children become successful readers and 200 children’s book titles geared towards Latino families.
