Understanding the Impact of FAR (Family Adventures In Reading/Family Activities For Readiness) Workshops on the Home Literacy Environment

The home literacy environment, which involves both parent-child reading and language activities, has been found to play a key role in a child’s literacy skills. More specifically, children’s literacy skills at kindergarten predict their literacy skills and ability to decode words in the first grade. However, some home literacy activities are more helpful than others. Reese and Cox found that a describer reading style promoted the best literacy skills with younger children. The describer style of reading is similar to the dialogic style of reading. Dialogic reading involves encouraging the child to actively participate in telling the story, interacting with the child and using feedback to expand on their ideas, correcting and praising the child, and selecting readings to stay at/above the child’s level of development. The FAR (Family Adventures in Reading/Family Activities for Readiness) parenting and reading workshops model dialogic reading in an effort to improve reading and school readiness in children and their families, and is being presented in the community. Through a series of parent questionnaires, I will focus on the parent-child literacy activities that occur in the homes of 3- to 4-year-old preschoolers. I will be exploring the effectiveness of the workshops by looking at the pre- and post -workshop home literacy activities, and comparing those result with that of families who did not attend the workshops. Home literacy activities should increase and/or become more effective as a result of participation in the workshops