Empowering Families: Practical Ways to Involve Parents in Boosting Literacy, Grades Pre-K-5

The home–school connection is important to student literacy achievement. However, it can be time-consuming to develop and implement programming that keeps families engaged and involved. Empowering Families makes it easier to accomplish these goals! Chock-full of step-by-step plans for arranging a variety of parent/caregiver meetings and literacy booster events, the book enables educators to get families involved in their children’s learning in ways that are fun and non-intimidating.

By hosting these events at your school, you’ll be empowering families to…

• read aloud to their children at home;
• minimize the summer slide;
• encourage male involvement in literacy;
• help their children avoid homework hassles;
• and much, much more!

Bonus: The book includes ready-to-use handouts for your events, such as announcement sheets, follow-up evaluations, and tipsheets that describe ways parents can reinforce literacy at home. These handouts are photocopiable and the tipsheets are also available for easy download from our website at www.routledge.com/9781138803114. Spanish versions of the tipsheets are available on our website as well.

Judy Bradbury has taught reading and writing to students from preschool through high school, as well as graduate-level literacy courses. She presents widely at conferences and offers professional development on topics of literacy.

Susan E. Busch has over 25 years of experience as a reading specialist in New York. Now retired from teaching, she continues to present family literacy workshops and offer consulting to school districts.