Masters Thesis

Bridging the gap between home and school: facilitating parent participation and student literacy development

Parent involvement is an important factor for student success; however, a stereotype among some teachers is that low-income minority parents do not want to invest in their child’s education. This thesis project contains research on factors that contribute to the lack of parent participation in school and techniques to increase parent participation. Parents who are involved in their child’s education convey a positive and successful experience in school. Training parents on early literacy skills may accomplish this success. Research on early literacy skills state that literacy practices vary for each family, which creates a disconnection between school and home literacy practices. As a result, this handbook includes four literacy workshops to help parents bridge the knowledge children learn at home and school. The teacher-led workshops consist of oral language, early reading skills, word work, and writing. The workshops aim to teach parents strategies that can be implemented at home to provide additional practice for students to be successful in Kindergarten and prepare them for their educational careers.

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