Program Description
The program is created to promote literacy skills in children from birth to the age of 5 years to entering school, and it is a community-based family literacy program. The program encourages parent and child participation in family understanding practices and language and education exercises at the family’s convenience (Kim & Byington, 2016). The involvement of parents and children in family understanding practices and language/education exercises varies depending on the characteristics of the family and the duration of the program. It makes use of strategies from the family storyteller program. It will employ digital tools such as narrative computer games, YouTube videos, short stories, televisions, radios and many more. For instance, the early literacy program Family Storyteller is aimed to encourage young children to participate in more literacy activities. The program takes place during mealtimes, naps, bedtimes, walks, playgrounds, and car rides; parents can share stories with their children. When parents and children tell stories, they spend precious time together, learning and laughing, which significantly promotes literacy skills in children under five years.
How does the Program Promote Literacy Skills?
Increasing family involvement in teaching language and reading to children from birth to five years helps them develop better literacy skills as they grow older. Participation of the entire family might also help to prevent future reading difficulties. Preschoolers who have access to books at home and guardians who read to them have better literacy abilities than children who do not have access to books at home or parental involvement in reading (Kim & Byington, 2016). For instance, children’s literacy development starts at birth, when they hear language for the first time and begin to comprehend the meaning of what is being said. When it comes to young children, their language and reading abilities develop quickly over the first five years of their lives. It has been discovered that children’s language and literacy development is influenced by their level of openness to language and education during their early years through activities such as storytelling. Storytelling activities incorporate all the students’ experiences, families and cultures (Brown et al., 2019). Daily and weekly storyteller programs center around shared perusing and interest in many kinds of education exercises. Besides, storytelling activities during mealtime break the cultural barriers that involve different social classes.
Envision the program implementation
Families and their preschool-aged children will participate in weekly one-hour Family Literacy Program sessions emphasizing shared reading and other literacy activities. Each meeting will focus on a different children’s book, such as Margaret Wise’s Goodnight Moon. The instructor will set the tone for the class by reading aloud from a book and posing thought-provoking questions to the students as they begin each session (Brown et al., 2019). Parents will learn how to engage their children in reading and literacy activities. As a follow-up to the featured book, parents will engage in a literacy activity while reading the book aloud to their preschoolers. Each session concludes with a book and a packet of extra activities for families to take home and complete on their own time.
The primary feature of the program will involve both the children under five years and their parents will play as a sustainable strategy. Parents and children reading together will continue successfully during family storytelling during mealtime and other sessions. In addition to the fact that guardians and kids will be interested in proficiency exercises together, this is one of the most important keys to the project’s success. After returning home from the studios with a book and materials for extra learning exercises close by, the youths can hardly stand by to begin their homework and learn more. On the other hand, parents know what they can do to assist their children (Swain & Cara, 2019). As a result, they will be more successful as they put their newly acquired talents into practice and interact as a family. The program will be expanded to a larger scale by collaborating with organizations such as Cooperative, public televisions, and counties and districts’ library systems.
Accessibility of Literacy Content to English Language Learners
The content will be made accessible by giving take-home English and well written and spoken instructions. Listening might be stressful for learners who are not yet confident in their ability to parse English speech, have not yet been acclimated to the local accent, or still have difficulty distinguishing the phonemes that identify certain words (Collier-Stewart, 2018). It is preferable to have a written copy of lecture notes or assignment instructions in these situations. Kids with learning disabilities benefit from language instruction in both written and spoken forms. Teachers of students with learning disabilities can benefit from language instruction as well.
Communication Plan
Educators from the Community-based Family Literacy Program for Preschoolers will provide instruction in English to students in low-income primary schools, Head Start programs, and other community child care facilities. Several mediums and formats will be used to give literacy skills to these children, all of which can be seen on mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones and PCs (Lastly.com., 2022). Therefore, this program will employ the following digital tools; narrative computer games, YouTube videos, short stories, televisions, radios and many more.
References
Lastly.com. (2022). Connecting Family through Digital Storytelling. Connecting Family through Digital Storytelling; Web.
Kim, Y., & Byington, T. (2016). Community-based family literacy program: Comparing different durations and family characteristics. Child Development Research, 2016.
Brown, C. L., Schell, R., Denton, R., & Knode, E. (2019). Family Literacy Coaching: Partnering with Parents for Reading Success. School Community Journal, 29(1), 63-86.
Swain, J., & Cara, O. (2019). The role of family literacy classes in demystifying school literacies and developing closer parent-school relations. Cambridge Journal of Education, 49(1), 111-131.
Collier-Stewart, S. (2018). Family literacy and social justice: Using storytelling to develop bilingual identities. In Social Justice and Parent Partnerships in Multicultural Education Contexts (pp. 209-226). IGI Global.