Improving Your Child’s Literacy Outside of School

Practical Ideas
Listed and explained below are a few ideas for you to get involved and help your child be
the best reader they can be! Through these simple (and fun) at home activities, their literacy rate
is bound to grow and exceed both mine and your expectations for them!

Dialogic & Shared Reading (page 10)

Dialogic reading is a method of reading where you are the guide and listener and your
child is the storyteller. The best way to succeed here is to find a book that you both love and
read often. Now, let them read the book to you as you act as their guide where they may stumble
on words or phrases. You should be ensuring that they are following through the words as they
read them, you can do this by pointing at the words as they say them.
Activity
1. Read the story together
2. Prompt them talk about something related to the story
3. Evaluate their response and then expand upon it by rephrasing or adding more
information
4. Repeat the prompt and see if your child gained more understanding of the information
in the story
TIP: Use Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How to guide your prompting.
Socio-Emotional Benefits
Results of studies where parents used these reading methods “indicate positive results of
reading interventions and home literacy activities on children’s early literacy and language
skills” (10). No need to make it a long activity because “shorter sessions (1 to 2 hours) relat[ed] to
stronger effects for children (d = 0.97) than longer training sessions (3 to 13.5 hours) (d = 0.37)”
(10).
Play and Learning Strategies (PALS)
Play and Learning Strategies (PALS) is simply shared book reading with your child and
demonstrating with your own words when things are happening. This requires a positive
attitude! There’s many different activities you all can do together that fall under this umbrella.
Activity
A. Use-open ended prompts to have discussions
B. Have shared reading sessions
C. Verbally support child led problem solving
 Improving Your Child’s Literacy Outside of School
D. Narrate actions as you do them
Socio-Emotional Benefits
In a study done using parents who practices PALS and those who did not, “the
PALS-prompted [parental] behaviors were linked to higher-level language responses by their
children, including more comments during the book reading task (d = 0.23) and more
cooperative behavior, compared with non-PALS I students (d = 0.92)...children whose mothers
had PALS I and II intervention showed more engagement and enthusiasm about the shared
reading activity than did children in the PALS I-only group
(d = 0.65)” (16).
Visiting the Children’s Museum
The Children’s Museum is a fun activity that you can do together at any age! These
museums are full of activities that will prompt great discussions between you all as well as lots
of thinking from them.
Activity
1. Go the nearest Children’s Museum with your child
2. Encourage and help them participate in all of the age appropriate activities
3. Question them as they participate
a. Why did you decide to do that next?
b. What shapes are those?
c. What words can you read there?
4. Let them ask questions too and answer as best you can
Socio-Emotional Benefits
Activities in the Children’s Museum are “positively and significantly associated with
cognitive and language scores on the Bayley Mental Development Index (MDI) and PPVT-III
at 14 months, 24 months, and 36 months” (19). These activities also are one of the significant
predictors in creating higher vocabulary levels through the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test
(PPVT-III).
More Information
If you’re interested in reading more into this, the resource used is listed before. Feel free
to reach out with any questions, comments, concerns, or praises! I’m interested in knowing
where I can help you and your student succeed, as well as where you all are already succeeding!
 Improving Your Child’s Literacy Outside of School
Resources

Van Voorhis, F. L., Maier, M. F., Epstein, J. L., & Lloyd, C. M. (2013). The Impact of Family
Involvement on the Education of Children Ages 3-8.