Engaging Families: Connecting Home and School Literacy Communities

By Betty Shockley, JoBeth Allen, Betty Shockley-Bisplinghoff, et al.

After four years of studying "the students [they] worried about most," Betty Shockley, Barbara Michalove, and JoBeth Allen began to consider the importance of children's literacy experiences outside of school. While their students talked regularly about home literacy events, there was no real link between home and school: no way to learn what families valued and practiced, no way to communicate how their children were becoming literate in school. Engaging Families details how these teachers and the students' families developed respected partnerships in the teaching/learning process. The authors share what they learned about creating an extended literacy community, identifying the primary themes in literacy development and suggesting parallel practices to reinforce them. But Engaging Families is not a prescriptive text, it is a description of one particular effort, featuring actual voices of children and parents.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0435088459
• ISBN13: 9780435088453
• Release Date: April 1995
• Publisher: Heinemann Educational Books
• Length: 162 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 7.7" x 10.0"
• Grade Range: Kindergarten to Grade 5

Customer Reviews

Engaging Family Review

Engaging Families by Betty Shockley, Barbara Michalove, and JoBeth Allen is a useful resource for educators interested in building a home-school partnership. This book illustrates the importance of communication between parents, students, and teachers in literacy through the use of reader response journals, family reflections, and home interest surveys. The focus was on building parallel practices that facilitate two-way interactions between home and school. These partnerships involve parents without requiring them to attend school functions. Additionally, these partnerships remain static, changing based on individual needs. Although this is a wonderful way to involve families in their children's literacy development, there are some issues to consider. Maintaining journals between home and school will require lots of organization and preparation. Furthermore, responding to the journals can be time consuming. Parents and teachers need to fully commit to this process in order for it to be successful. This book will be beneficial for those teachers who are looking for another way to involve and build relationships with families. It is easy to read and gives examples of the dialogues between three families. The format is organized in a manner such that the reader is given background information about parallel practices before student scenarios are described. The book concludes with questions and answers asked by teachers, parents, and researchers. An example of a family reading journal is included in the appendix. That is a good reference to accompany the process the authors describe throughout the book. Finally, there are references, which allow the reader to explore this subject further.