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Engage Families and Community in Summer Literacy Activities
As the academic year winds down, it's time for us to think about literacy activities that can engage students beyond the classroom. These resources offer ways to begin the conversation.
Family message journals are a teacher-tested tool for encouraging family involvement and supporting writing to reflect and to learn. The ReadWriteThink lesson plan Launching Family Message Journals (E) demonstrates how to introduce the strategy. Once the process is underway, encourage individual families to continue the journaling practice during the summer months.
Ask students to discuss family traditions with the ReadWriteThink lesson Investigating Names to Explore Personal History and Cultural Traditions (M). In this lesson, students investigate the meanings and origins of their own names in order to establish their own personal histories and to explore cultural significance of naming traditions. As they visit family and friends during their vacation, families can encourage students to continue exploring their family and cultural naming traditions. Imagine, for instance, students and other family members constructing a family tree that includes not just relatives' names but the origins of the many names included.
Extend family and community conversation by focusing on storytelling with the ReadWriteThink lesson The Year I Was Born: An Autobiographical Research Project (S). In this activity, students conduct interviews and research online and at the library to find details on what was going on internationally, nationally, locally, in sports, music, arts, commercial, TV, and publishing during the year that they were born. During the summer months, students can extend their research on their own past or explore the years that others in their family were born.
The College English article "Writing beyond the Curriculum: Fostering New Collaborations in Literacy" (C) urges college teachers to move beyond the classroom to engage the community -- a great project for the summer months. The article describes a program that carries writing instruction and literacy research beyond university boundaries, and suggests problems and benefits that may accompany this change of orientation for writing programs.
For additional ideas and tips you can share with families, be sure to check the NCTE Web page, What Can Family Literacy Look Like?
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