Final paper

Kindergarten Literacy Action Plan

2016

Action Plan – Kindergarten Literacy

University of Utah

Content Page

Brief Summary 3

Introduction and Rationale 4

Types of Involvement 5

Identifying Partners 6

Front-end Assessment 7

Goals and Objectives 8

Identifying Potential Barriers 8

Timeline for Implementation 9

Evaluation of the Partnership 10

References 11

Brief Summary

In the Salt Lake School District, Mountain View Elementary School has an exceptionally diverse student body. Their students include individuals speaking over 31 different languages and less than 10% are Caucasian. Many are refugees from various countries and 100% of the school’s students qualify for the free school lunch program. After personally spending an entire day observing some of their unique challenges, I was surprised to learn that the majority of them are Somali Bantu (African) and many of these children had not had an opportunity to receive any type of formal education before and neither had their parents. These children do not know how to read or write and the majorities come from communities with predominantly oral language traditions. (Roxas & Roy, 2011) Their transition to a school context that is based on the written word is very challenging, especially for the students without any type of previous education. To make matters worse, many of these students are viewed negatively by their peers because of their educational inadequacies compared to other children of the same age. These youth refugees are typically placed in a U.S. public school classroom based on age, not on the educational level of their background or experience and the Somali Bantu people do not feel it important to keep track of age or birthdates, thus making things more challenging.

According to the staff at Mountain View Elementary, refugee children rarely receive academic support from their parents because of their own inadequate levels of formal education and lack of cultural understanding and knowledge of how to support their children. Most of the time, these children are left on their own to navigate the American School System. Because of this, the school staff initially believes the student’s parents are the greatest obstacle to their children’s education; however they eventually come to know that mothers and fathers show interest in their children’s education and communicate their desires for their children to do well in school. One of the greatest obstacles to their full adaptation to their new environment is the huge communication barrier, which prevents them from learning how best to support their children’s education.

These children are most definitely on a negative trajectory as far as their cognitive, social and emotional abilities are concerned. In order to build resiliency in these children, they need intervention and support from their parents, teachers, and caregivers to model specific values which will help them experience success in their young lives. In order for this to happen, it is absolutely essential to promote and build programs to increase their personal resiliency, to uplift and carry them from childhood to adulthood and teach them how to become upstanding citizens who contribute to the communities in which they live. There are 3 basic strategies for intervention suggested by resilience research, they are;

1. Risk Focused Strategies – These reduce the exposure of children to hazardous experiences.

2. Asset Focused Strategies – These increase the amount of, access to, or quality of resources children need for the development of competence.

3. Process Focused Strategies – These try to mobilize the fundamental protective systems for each child’s development (programs which ensure that every child has effective and caring adults in their lives. (Masten, A., 2000)

Introduction and Rationale

The program I purpose is one where we empower the parents to become their children’s best teacher by increasing their own literacy level while helping their children increase theirs. The Mountain View Community Center is located on the school grounds of the Elementary school and parents of the children attend ESL and parenting classes here two evenings per week while community outreach volunteers supervise the children. In order to make the necessary connections more directly, I propose that we have the community center educators emphasize ways to support their children’s education by giving tips and demonstrations as part of the ESL and parenting lessons. The parents will be given experience in interacting in English with their child’s teachers, and they will also learn to reinforce literacy concepts at home (modeled to them by teachers of the parenting class in collaboration with classroom teachers of the children.) This will help refugee parents be more active in their children’s education, and give them greater access to resources to better feed and care for their families. Access to appropriate children’s books is a problem because of the cost factor, so we add an additional component of this plan by providing each Kindergarten classroom with a supply of take home literacy bags for the children to take home each week, which will include an engaging picture book on a certain theme, a supporting book, and family activities that will help both parents and children get the practice they need and increase access to books and meaningful educational activities the entire family will enjoy. (Because I study Early Childhood Education, it makes sense for me to begin with the Kindergarten classes; therefore this program will also begin there. It will be reevaluated to include additional grades depending on the effectiveness with this group.) Research shows that low income parents who are given a children’s book are 4 times more likely to report looking at the book and talking about it with their children. (Needleman, R., 2009) The last several years there has also been a great amount of research in addressing the academic gap these children have throughout their school years. Engaging families and providing them with tools to take home and enjoy with their children remains one of the very best ways to close this gap. (Horn & Jones, 2005)

Types of Involvement

The first type of involvement to implement in this program is the basic responsibility of the family to establish a home environment conducive to supporting their children in their education. This must be taught to the parents through demonstrations and a tip each week in their Community ESL & Parenting Classes. The second type of involvement is communication. All materials will most likely require translation to accommodate the specific home languages of each of the children. The PTA and community volunteers can help with this. The third type of involvement is volunteering itself. We will seek local High School Child Development Classes to plan and make the literacy bags under the direction of their instructors, and volunteers will be asked to sew the actual canvas bags to hold the books and educational materials. Learning at home is the entire focus of this project, but the involvement here means that the children’s teachers must be proactive in collaborating with the families and the Community Center Educators to be certain the material parents get at their classes are in line with the children’s needs. Shared Decision Making will be a must as the teachers work with Community Education Instructors to write outlines of strategies the children need and ways to incorporate them into the parent’s learning. The final type of involvement is Community Collaborations. It may be necessary to apply for a grant to provide quality books for this project. The Kindergarten teachers would be responsible for this undertaking. The local High Schools, especially the Child Development Classes and their teachers will develop, design, make and assemble the literacy activities to coordinate with the books for the children. The teachers of these courses will guide the students in making a simple question card with 7 or 8 simple open ended questions the parents can use to help them further extend the learning with each literacy bag. Also, local businesses will be asked if they would like to contribute monetary funds or paper and other supplies so the children will have the resources needed such as paper crayons, pencils, glue, scissors, etc. at home to complement their learning.

Identifying Partners

Potential Partner	Anticipated Role	Time Commitment
High School Child Development Students/Teachers	Under teacher’s direction, each High School Child Development Student will design and create 2 literacy bags. Their teacher’s will see that the bags contain at least 2 books, and 3 or 4 related family activities, a response journal and an open ended question card to help parents extend learning.	1 year prior to implementation year.
Kindergarten Teachers	Apply for educational grants for project. Collaborate with Community Ed team to make list of possible tips and demos for parents. Write up a contract for parents to help care for literacy bags and use them as intended. To facilitate and encourage responsibility in children and devise way to check out and return bags each week. Reach out to other colleagues who may be able to assist with programs.	1 year prior to implementation and continued involvement during project year.
Community Education Teachers	Collaborate with Kindergarten teachers to plan and prepare tips, teach and demonstrations of how to teach parents to support their children in educational project.	Implementation year
PTA Board	Provide assistance to staff and families for smooth implementation. Help with communication and translation as needed. Be involved in soliciting parent volunteers for demonstrations and lessons as well as getting parents to eventually help implement program such as taking care of bag check out and in, etc.	One year prior to implementation year and support throughout project.
Community Education Specialists	Help communicate purpose of program and enlist parents in attending classes and meetings, share knowledge and experiences and reach out to other colleagues who may be able to assist. Collaborate with Kindergarten teachers to devise plans to teach parents skills the children need.	Implementation year and all of project year.
Parents	Sign contract, commit to learn to support children in literacy efforts each week, attend parent classes and involve families in literacy bag activities. Eventually take over maintenance of plan.	Implementation year all of the project year.
Local non-profit groups and businesses.	Funding for books and supplies and bag contents, help locate potential speakers for motivation.	Initial funding for preparatory year.
Community Volunteers	Sew bags and take to High School Teachers. Help train refugee parents in volunteering and checking in and out bags on a weekly basis.	One year prior implementation year and next.

Front-end Assessment

A front end assessment is an assessment that can help you determine the state of and the history of the partnership at the present time. In an existing partnership it can help identify needs, and barriers. The purpose of this action plan is to educate and train parents to take an active role in their children’s education, specifically their literacy education. An initial survey will be sent home with each kindergartner to find out how frequently each family utilizes the public library, who has library cards and the frequency they are used, whether or not families have paper and writing materials at home, the number of books children have access to in their homes, whether or not magazines and catalogues are in the home and if they are being used for educational purposes or not. We also aim to find out whether or not the families have any print material from their native countries of any kind such as newspapers, books, photos, handwritten letters, etc. and possible learning experiences we can incorporate these into. For some of this information, we have a good idea what the figures are, considering the families we are working with, and some of this will help us figure out how to best help the children. This survey will help us gage whether or not these factors improve at all as we work to educate the parents and get their families involved in literacy education. Statistics will also be gathered from past achievement tests, socioeconomic status, and demographics of the population living within the school boundaries. Surveys will also be given at the end of the project, as well as feedback from the families, children and educators involved and what each of them felt were the most helpful and enjoyable resources for their families and/or students. The classroom teachers will also make and document observations regarding the pupils in their class for the purpose of identifying specific support strategies needed. We know that the socio/economic status, home language, the home literary environment and family awareness all play a great role in each child’s literacy development and school achievement. These surveys and specific identified strategies are critical in helping to identify where the most pressing needs are and identify ways to help families understand how important their role is in relation to the academic success of their children. These directly relate to “asset focused resilience strategies” which means we are increasing access to quality resources, providing extra tutoring, making parents more effective teachers thus increasing parenting skills, and the language practice will also help parents with individual job programs. They also relate to the “process-focused resiliency strategies” which put into place additional protective systems such as fostering attachment relationships within the family, activating a natural motivation system with the benefit being fun family activities, mentoring with caring adults, and provide extra opportunities to develop talents within the children’s and the parent’s literacy proficiency. This type of intervention is nearly certain to change the children’s trajectory positively and could be a major factor in the equifinality.

Goals and Objectives

The main goal of this project is to provide meaningful tools, activities and resources to help families learn how to support their children in their education-particularly as it relates to literacy. Parents will be taught specific ways to engage with their children in meaningful learning activities and provide step by step ways to make learning productive and a positive experience for all. Relationships between children (students) and their families will become more secure, stable, and communicative. These will be measured by short term objectives:

· To increase the access to quality children’s literature.

· To increase each families use of the public library system to secure books and other resources for their children’s enjoyment and learning.

· Foster the motivation to read in children by engaging them in related family activities which will strengthen family bonds and learning.

· Move towards improving state reading standards school wide.

· Support parents as they learn how to become involved directly with their children’s education.

· Communicate to parents exactly what to do when reading to their children so they’ll be more likely to read with them consistently. (Open ended questions from literacy bags.)

It is important to note that the “host” environment for the parents will be the Community Education Center where modeling, teaching and some implementation will occur. The “host” environment for the children will be their school teacher and classroom where they will be taught responsibility for the bags and contents and procedures for taking them home and returning them.

Identifying Potential Barriers

The most prevalent barrier to this program is funding. The high school students will monetary assistance to purchase the items and books for the literacy bags. The kindergarten teacher will apply for an educational grant to facilitate this project the year prior to implementation to give the high school students the time needed to plan and purchase bag contents. The teacher will also meet with the community educators as well as the Kindergarten teachers to be certain all expectations are met. The literacy bags will remain the property of the teacher’s kindergarten classroom. The second barrier will obviously be that the school has 31 different home languages to accommodate. This is an ongoing problem with the school in this location. Translators will be needed to address the language barriers for the children and their families and to communicate their needs to the English speaking teachers. All written communication must also be translated in order to be useful to the parents. Using the internet for translation purposes is not appropriate as less than 8% of the families have access to these types of devices. Cultural issues must also be respected, so consulting one or more specialists who have experience with this would also be helpful.

Timeline for Implementation

January 2017	1. Contact and propose program to principle of local high school and involve teachers of Child Development Classes. 2. Kindergarten teacher applies for educational grant for project. 3. Collaborate with Community Education Center, Kindergarten Teachers, PTA board, and High School Child Development Teachers, to plan needed program outlines and responsibilities. 4. Contact local business partners to find out what they can fund.
April 2017	1. Recruit volunteers to sew bags. Recruit translators to work on project. 2. Have a meeting to include all participating partners and make assignments for various responsibilities. 3. High School students prepare 2 bags each for their final grade.
September 2017	1. Collect and organize existing data. Kindergarten teachers assess children to determine types of interventions needed. 2. Distribute parent and family surveys. 3. Kick-off PTA meeting introducing program basics to all families, children, and partners.
October 2017	1. Action Plan Begins with Parent meeting at Community Center. Schedule for additional Parent meetings given and outline of mini lessons distributed. Parent meetings held each week. 2. Teacher teaches children responsibility for bags, check in and out procedures. Each child takes home one bag each week and returns them the following week on a designated day. 3. Field trips planned for the kindergarten classes to go to visit the public library. A field trip for the parents as part of their community education will also be planned for them to be educated as to the types of materials they can access for no cost.
March-April 2018	1. Surveys distributed to parents, children, teachers and project facilitators. Results are recorded, compared to earlier survey and evaluated.
May 2018	1. Project ends. Families completing at least 75% of all training meetings and at least 25 literacy bags with their children will be awarded certificates at the annual awards assembly at school.

Evaluation of Partnership

This partnership will be evaluated by the use of resources parents use to facilitate greater literacy proficiency in their children. Parents also fill out a response page with each literacy bag completed at home before returning the bag to school. This response will give the teacher a clue as to what activities were helpful and enjoyable for the families, and were easy for them to implement. Because communication is so vital, the response can be a sketch or a drawing of the family participating in the activity, or the children can draw what they liked best, or it can be a simple note. The last survey will be given towards the end of the 9 months from when the project was implemented and hopefully will show some of the benefits and describe some of the experiences of individual families and what they enjoyed or disliked about the project as well as any suggestions for improvement. If this project increases the children’s reading scores (from the achievement test taken towards the end of April), it will likely be expanded to include more classrooms and grade appropriate materials and activities. Teachers, business partners, administrators, PTA board, and any volunteers will also be given a final survey. The Kindergarten teacher and the Community Education Teachers will submit a project report which will describe the social and cognitive benefits of the project, things that worked well, and things that needed to be improved upon. These professionals will also include their thoughts and feelings on the project and whether either party found positive supportive behavior as far as the parent’s reactions to the children’s education are concerned.

References

Horn, E. M., & Jones, H. (2005). "Supporting Early Literacy Development in Young Children" (monograph). Young Exceptional Children, 7th ser.

Masten, A. (2012). "Children who Overcome Adversity to Succeed in Life" University of Minnesota Extension.

Needleman, R., Freid, L. E., & Morley, D. S. (1991). "Clinic Based Interventions to Promote Literacy" A Pilot Study. American Journal Disabled Child, 145(8), 881-884.

Roxas, K., & Roy, L. (2011). "Where to Start: Learning from Somali Bantu Students and their Families" Teacher Education and Practice, 25(1), 100-118.

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