The partnership between educators and families is one of the most powerful incentives to get students to reach their reading goals. As emerging readers navigate the summer months and return to school in the fall, teachers and parents must join forces to continue to build the foundational skills for reading by practicing beyond the classroom and reinforcing those concepts at home. If young readers can master those foundational skills earlier, they will be set up to be more confident readers. To help you better partner with families, below are some tips to support parents in reinforcing strong reading techniques at home.

1. Families should make reading fun! Make it a game or a challenge. For example, if the student is learning their letter sounds, parents can make it a game and set a goal for the week. If the goal is learning 5 letter sounds, then make sure that if the students identify those letter sounds, you get to celebrate by having a treat or engaging in their favorite activity. If children associate positive things with reading, then they will want to learn and complete the challenge. Families can practice reading at home, in the car, or even at the beach! We need to help families foment the love and joy of reading from day one. A resource for parents is this letter identification handout for parents. 

2. Families should model fluent and consistent reading. The Science of Reading calls on us to not just prioritize phonics but also fluency. To do this, parents must read to their children for at least 20 minutes a day. It is so important that students hear what it sounds like to be a fluent reader so they can model it. If families can’t devote 20 minutes every day, every little bit helps to hear fluent reading consistently so they can better replicate it. The most impactful part is to keep the routine and have positive incentives to continue. Parents should not skip out on a day of practice because they want to build a habit and a routine around it. For those families, whose English is not their first language, websites like BookShare can assist in having the young reader model fluent reading.

3. Families should mirror the same strategies as the classroom. Families need to understand and learn the strategies being used in the classroom. For instance, if your emergent readers are practicing a phonological awareness routine around onset time, share with families exactly how you teach the strategy in the classroom. This allows students to have more practice with the same skill.

Take a moment to watch this video showcasing one of our teachers sharing with families how to say the letter sounds.

At Uncommon Schools, we created Kindergartner milestones so teachers and parents would have a benchmark on their students’ trajectory to becoming a strong reader. We created a timeline for when a student should know how to write their name, when they should know their letter sounds and we communicated that with teachers and teachers communicated with families. To replicate the milestones to share with families, use this document to create your own plan to share with families and download these template certificates to celebrate reaching those milestones.

4. Families should build engagement through questioning. During orientation we share a resource with parents with a list of questions for their nightly reading for guidance. For example, we ask parents to tell the child their title and ask them to read it three times. They can ask simple questions like:  Looking at the cover, what do you think the story will be about? Where is the story taking place and during what time of day? How does the character feel? What is the problem in the story? How do you know? Very basic level questions allow families to get their child thinking about meaning and reading comprehension. The more engaged the young reader feels in the text, the more likely they will be to keep reading with the parent every night. Families can follow this guide of questions when reading with their young readers at home.

5. Families should encourage their child’s reading development, but not compare. There are times we see families comparing one child’s progress with another, and we encourage families to avoid doing that since each student learns how to read at their own pace. So we tell families to be patient, practice, and keep reading every night as the best practices to ensure the development of their child into a strong reader.

Every teacher needs to honor the partnership with students to get them to the milestones sooner; it is essential to their success. If we can provide clarity on the milestones for families and the strategies we use in class, it will help with the collective goal. At the end of the day, the goal is to teach the love of reading early on and make students feel confident while doing it.