Parenting for a Literate Community is a program for parents/guardians and their preschool children. It honours everyday life and diverse family activities and draws upon resources in domestic and community contexts. The family's own everyday experiences and stories are celebrated and used as the springboard for developing literacy teaching and learning. It is this springboard which must project children into other literate communities; in the neighbourhood, the school and eventually the workplace.
The program gives close attention to the relationship between family and
schooled literacies, and emphasizes the connections between the many community-based
agencies which provide support for literacy development in the preschool
years.
Parenting for a Literate Community is designed to be flexible and responsive to emerging family needs and priorities. Along with the professionals, the families involved shape the program according to their own needs and circumstances, and fashion it to help them accomplish their hopes and dreams.
In fact, Parenting for a Literate Community does not even have to stand as a separate program: the fundamental ideas and principles can simply be integrated into existing programs and services. Indeed, many of these fundamental ideas and principles already infuse the work of Family Resource Centre and Early Intervention personnel. What is most important is that those concerned:
- continue to recognize diverse family circumstances, values and literacies,
- continue to honour and support parents and guardians as the child's primary literacy teachers, and
- give new life to an empowering literacy through
its daily practice in diverse communities.
Cultivating
Language and Literate Play
Anticipating
Text: Predictable Books
Publishing
Information
Publications
THE
EARLY CHILDHOOD CENTRE
University of New Brunswick
Faculty of Education