TITLE Home Literacy Portfolios: Cooperative Tools for Assessing Parents ' Involvement in Their Prekindergarten Child's

One approach to promote partnerships between parents and schools and parents ' involvement in a child's literacy development is to instruct parents through a workshop about literacy development and how to develop a portfolio of their child's literacy development reflecting literacy behavior at home. Parents of prekindergarten students in one public school in Texas were selected by teachers to be invited to such a workshop. Participants included six parent-child dyads, two African American dyads, two Hispanic dyads, and two Anglo-American dyads. The theory of child development of A. Vygotsky and U. Bronfenbrenner's theory of human ecology were the bases for the program. Interviews with participants established the amount of parent involvement prior to the workshops. Workshops were held once a week for 8 weeks to encourage parents to be more aware of literacy development and to read to their children. Parents were involved in their children's literacy development to begin with, but their awareness was increased by attending the workshops and developing the home literacy portfolios. Findings suggest that the home literacy portfolio is also a useful took for sharing information at parent/teacher conferences. (Contains one table and nine references.) (SLD) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document