Article: "Training Parents to Teach Their Preschoolers Through Literature"

Since I started my Early Literacy class, I've been thinking a lot about readiness and helping parents to help their children. This article sort of seems like a precursor to Every Child Ready to Read. It describes a home-based preschool program that helps parents teach readiness skills to their children through literature and literature-based activities. It is not as in-depth (at least the article doesn't go as in-depth) as ECRR as the skills being covered are not defined really. They are briefly mentioned in regards to one specific storytime but overall guidelines are not covered in this article. I liked this. It was interesting to read about what was happening with early literacy before ECRR. This is slightly different since this approach came through the school and not the library, but many of the techniques are similar. However, it's a bit unrealistic to expect a librarian to make home visits to individual families to help them with early literacy skills (and I'm quite surprised that the district in question was actually able to do this with a teacher!). I liked some of the ideas here, though. Having the teacher (or as it would be in my case, the librarian) dress as a storybook character is a great way to promote enjoyment of books, especially if a well-known character is employed. This could really work with themed storytimes, as the article mentioned having Little Bo Peep reading sheep books and doing sheep activities. Another idea that I really love (and which I also noticed at a library visit recently) is having preselected bags of picture books to leave with parents or for parents to take home. Some families don't have books at home. It's hard for me to fathom but it's true. Providing a bag of books selected by a librarian is a great way to assure kids are getting exposure to good books, especially if the parents feel too busy to select their own books. If possible, including a sheet of information about the books and how they help with different literacy/readiness skills could add to the effectiveness of such a bag but may not always be possible. Still, I think this is a great idea.



Spewock, T. (1988). Training Parents to Teach Their Preschoolers Through Literature. The Reading Teacher, 41(7), p. 648-652. Retrieved from JSTOR database.