Family literacy activities in the homes of successful young readers.

Family Literacy Activities in the Homes of Successful Young Readers : A Review

Family literacy is situated on the ways on how families , children , and extended family members use literacy at home and in their community Examples of family literacy might include using drawings or writing to share ideas , composing notes or letters to communicate messages , keeping records , making lists , following written directions , or sharing stories and ideas through conversation , reading , and writing . In the study of Stainthorp and Hughes (2000 , they presented an account of the literacy activities engaged in by

the parents of 29 children around the time that the children were about to start school at Key Stage 1

To accomplish this , they invited fifteen of the children , who were reading fluently before they began school , and the remaining fourteen were matched for age , sex , receptive vocabulary scores , pre-school group attended and socio-economic family status , but not reading fluently . The first 15 children were able to achieve at least Level 2 on the English Standard Assessment Tasks : Reading . This is the level expected of children at the age of seven years after a minimum of two full years and possibly up to three full years in primary school . The mean chronological age of the children at this time was 4 years 8 months . Of these fifteen Young Early Readers , ten were girls and five were boys This conforms to stereotypes about girls being more likely to be interested in reading at an earlier age than boys . However , the authors would not want to make any claims about this . These children were all in the project because of parental and /or teacher report . On the other hand , families of thirteen Non Early Readers were then identified who we were able to match on the basis of age , sex , British Picture Vocabulary Scale (BPVS ) score , pre-school group attended , projected KS1 class and socio-economic status . The remaining two Young Early Readers were both going to the same school so they were matched with just one Non Early Reader giving a The longitudinal study of Young Early Readers will monitor the phonological sensitivity and the progress in literacy of a group of 15 children , who had been identified as being fluent readers before they started Key Stage 1 and a matched group of 14 children who were not yet fluent readers . The rationale for the study related to the fact that there is now abundant evidence that sensitivity to the phonological aspects of language is highly correlated with reading success particularly in the early stages . The authors were interested to identify whether precocious readers would show the predicted high levels of phonological sensitivity at an earlier age than non-precocious readers

Since parents were vital in accomplishing this study to ascertain that the fluent readers were not simply coming from homes where literacy activities were more in evidence , they were also asked to report on their own literacy activities . The authors deemed that it is important to investigate the literacy activities that were...