UK resources on involving fathers in children's reading

Though very UK focussed eg role of football/ soccer, Dad's Clubs etc, these resources may be of interest to spark ideas / discussion...

Getting the Blokes on Board
A downloadable resource from the UK Literacy Trust about involving fathers and male carers in reading with their children, aimed at professionals who work with parents rather than the parents themselves.

http://www.literacytrust.org.uk/familyreading/Blokes.html

Father's impact on their children's education and achievement
Children, both boys and girls, benefit enormously from their fathers' involvement in their learning and education. And what matters most is not how much time fathers spend with their children, but the quality of what they do when they are together.
http://www.fatherhoodinstitute.org/index.php?id=12&cID=583

Children want "ordinary activities" with their dads
Britain's children want not expensive holidays, computers or bikes from their dads, but shared time playing football, chatting at bedtime, being helped with homework, "messing about", being cooked for, attending the mosque, going shopping.

http://www.fatherhoodinstitute.org/index.php?id=12&cID=78

Think Fathers "Dad test"
The free downloadable Think Fathers Dad Test is designed to help managers and practitioners start to assess how father-inclusive their service is, with ideas for small changes that can help meet the needs of mums, dads and children more effectively.
http://www.fatherhoodinstitute.org/index.php?id=3&cID=922

Summer slide - 2 - messages to parents

Here are some notes you may wish to use as a starting point for communicating with parents… Put them onto your school letterhead or in a newsletter, and edit them as you wish…

3 important messages for parents / caregivers / whanau

We know you want the best for your children.
Here are three things you can do which will really help them :

1. Encourage your children to read.

• If your children spend 15 minutes each day reading or being read to, it will help them become excellent readers, writers and thinkers and do well at school and life.
• 15 minutes is only 1 % of each day. It could be in 3 lots of 5 minutes. It isn’t much time but it makes a HUGE difference.
• If you would like some help getting books to read and share, then please ask us, we’d be happy to help.

2. Keep reading and writing happening over the school holidays.

• Many children, especially struggling readers, forget some of what they've learned or slip out of practice during the summer holidays. If you keep reading to your child and encouraging them to read and write, then they won’t lose ground they have made over the year and “slide” back.
• Keep it fun – read anything, write anything – lists, recipes, stories, postcards, comics… Ask your child’s teacher for ideas.

3. Read aloud to your children.

• The single most important activity for building the knowledge required for eventual success in reading is reading aloud to children.
• Reading aloud to children stimulates their interest, their emotional development, their imagination, and their language.
• Reading aloud to your children every day will help them become great readers and listeners, but most of all they will love you for doing it with them and they will remember the times you read to them all their lives !

Reading Rockets newsletters

Reading Rockets http://www.readingrockets.org/newsletters/extras
From this US website you can download or be sent Ed Extras - a free monthly service that offers articles about learning aimed at preschools, primary schools and PTAs.
The one page articles can be downloaded either as a PDF or a Word document, and contain helpful suggestions to encourage home literacy practice eg bedtime reading, "grocery store literacy", the role of fathers, etc.
Though you probably wouldn't use them exactly as they are, they would be better "translated" to the New Zealand context, they could be a good starter for items to go to parents in a school newsletter maybe...
Click below to:
· Download the latest Ed Extras article
· Sign up for Ed Extras
· Get past articles
Reading Rockets is funded by the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs.

Home -school reading partnership resource

The UK National Literacy Trust have produced a very useful Family Involvement Toolkit Reading Connects family involvement toolkit (pdf) to help schools reach out to families and encourage them to make their homes reading homes.
(To save a PDF, right click on the link, then select Save Target As and select a folder on your computer in which to save the document.)
The Reading Connects Family Involvement Toolkit was written following a cafe-style discussion conference in 2006 which brought together a wide range of experts in engaging parents and other family members with their children's reading. It was written for primary and secondary schools