Feasibility of Building Bridges Between School and Homes in Developing ESL Literacy: The SPIRE Project

Abstract

This paper presents a feasible framework for building bridges between schools and homes to develop five year olds ESL literacy skills, using storybooks as a springboard. A reading program, i.e. Smart Partnership in Reading in English (SPIRE) was designed in response to the government's aspiration to raise literacy rates to 100% by 2020 and the Minister of Education's call for both parents and teachers to play a more active role for reading to be developed as part of the Malaysian culture. Evidence of the positive effects of storybook reading abounds in the literature and various successful reading programs that bridges schools and home to develop L1 literacy have been carried out, particularly in the UK and USA. However, a similar approach appears to be not adopted in Malaysia. Hence, the SPIRE project was conceptualised to make schools more "permeable" and to move L2 literacy from the classroom into the L2 naturalistic context at homes. 25 multiracial children, their parents and the class teacher participated in this project. Storybooks and other multimedia materials were frequently and repeatedly read/listened to in school, and were taken home for parents to scaffold their children's ESL literacy development at home. The mixed method approach, using numerous instruments was employed to evaluate the effectiveness of the project. The study found that the children's progress corresponded to the storybook reading experiences at home. The children, whose parents displayed higher levels of involvement made faster progress compared to the children whose parents were less involved. Consequently, 16 children made substantial improvements and were independent readers at the end of the six months project.

A Collaborative and Supplemental Model to Enhance Early Language and Reading Skills

“…Even further, these lending libraries could be located within the community. Using brochures may prove to be effective not only for home-school collaboration but also for strengthening reading skills of primary-grade students (BavaHarji, Letchumanan, & Bhar, 2014). Family members could also contribute to the development of future brochures by sharing strategies that have worked for them as well as content and resources available in their homes and communities.…”

Parental Involvement in Storybook Reading in English Project: Beyond the Reading Vocabulary

“…Strong links between parental involvement and reading development was also apparent. The more involved the parents were, the better was the children's reading progress (see Bava Harji et al, 2014;Harji, Balakrishnan & Letchumanan, 2016. As mentioned earlier, this paper presents the findings of the children's ESL literacy development, particularly in terms of letter and vocabulary development.…”