SPIRE Project: Parental Involvement in Young Children’s ESL Reading Development

Harji, Madhubala Bava; Balakrishnan, Kavitha; Letchumanan, Krishnanveni

doi:10.5539/elt.v9n12p1

Cited by 15 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…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.…”

Section: The Study: Smart Partnership In Reading In English (Spire) Pmentioning

confidence: 80%

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

Harji¹,

Balakrishnan²

2019

JKMJC

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Since the 60s, research on emergent literacy has presented empirical evidence for the links between storybook reading to young children, parental involvement and language development. Stories, which provide children with vast opportunities to hear new words in a meaningful context subsequently lead to the acquisition of a richer mental model of both the world and vocabulary. Albeit research findings point to the strong causal links between storybook reading, literacy and language, development and parental involvement, little effort appears to be made in Malaysian's pre-schools to capitalise on storybooks as a vehicle to literacy development and engaging the young children's first teachers as partners for a common purpose. A structured program that builds bridges between schools and homes is lacking and researched upon. In exploring this missed opportunity, the Smart Partnership in Reading in English (SPIRE) project was piloted in a private preschool. 25 young children, their parents and the class teacher were involved in the project. The mix-mode method was adopted to gather quantitative and qualitative data. Findings show improved reading vocabulary and beyond: receptive and expressive language skills, print awareness, knowledge of grammar, meta-linguistic awareness. Implication is clear; storybooks can be a springboard to develop English literacy skills, specifically reading in English skills. Young learner providers would want to capitalise on this springboard, making learning to read more meaningful and pleasant, and less structured. A serious consideration ought to be made in involving parents (first teachers) to scaffold young learners' literacy development.

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Section: The Study: Smart Partnership In Reading In English (Spire) Pmentioning

confidence: 80%

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

Harji¹,

Balakrishnan²

2019

JKMJC

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“…The need for launching and assessing programs, that bridge the distance between school and home and involve parents in various activities, has been recorded in the literature (BavaHarji, Balakrishnan, & Letchumanan, 2016;Forey, Besser & Sampson, 2015;Reese et al, 2010). Families can more successfully address/overcome difficulties encountered during learning by working in partnership with schools and the community (Adelman & Taylor, 2002).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Parental Involvement in a Program for Preschoolers Learning a Foreign Language

Korosidou

Griva

Pavlenko

2020

IJRES

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The role of parental involvement in the sense of home-based or school-based programs for supporting children’s early literacy development and education in the Greek state school context has not been well established. The ‘PIECE’ (Parental Involvement for the Engagement, Cooperation and Empowerment) program is a novel inclusion program implemented for a school year in a kindergarten in Northern Greece, which aims at enhancing parental involvement in a preschool foreign language learning setting. It targeted parents by including both school and home components with the ultimate purpose to support their role in improving preschoolers’ early foreign language (FL) literacy. This type of involvement was operationalized as partnership among the researchers, the school and the parents. More specifically, they were involved in school activities and meetings, while they also spent quality time with their children at home doing activities and utilizing digital educational materials to support preschoolers’ learning. The results obtained from questionnaires distributed to parents, the teacher/researcher’s journal and the focus group discussions indicated the importance of “parental” involvement for effective FL learning in the early years. Concluding, the findings suggest that parental involvement in early language learning projects contributes to the enhancement of young children’s oracy and literacy skills.

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“…The parents who took the partnership more seriously, worked closely with the teacher, participated more actively in the project and scaffold constantly their children's reading development and experienced greater progress in their child's reading ability. Of the 25 children, the 16 children whose parents worked "hand-in-hand" with the teacher made better progress at the end of the project (BavaHarji, Letchumanan & Bhar, 2014;Harji, Balakrishnan & Letchumanan, 2016). These parents actively scaffold their children's reading ability, attend all meetings where the teacher scaffold the parents' in designing a rich ESL literacy environment at home and read interactively to create positive social interactive during the shared reading encounters.…”

Section: (Tj)mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This can obviously be seen in the varying levels of parental involvement. (Harji, Balakrishnan & Letchumanan, 2016). The parents who took the partnership more seriously, worked closely with the teacher, participated more actively in the project and scaffold constantly their children's reading development and experienced greater progress in their child's reading ability.…”

Section: (Tj)mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The channels of communication (record cards, informal conferences, letters, newsletters, phone calls, home visits, meetings, weekend activity record) were aimed at enabling the partners to communication and evaluate the children's progress (BavaHarji, Letchumanan, & Bhar, 2014;Harji, Balakrishnan, & Letchumanan, 2016).…”

Section: The Smart Partnership In Reading In English (Spire) Projectmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The PaCT: Parents, Children and Teacher Partnership in Developing ESL Literacy

Harji¹,

Balakrishnan²,

Letchumanan³

2017

ELT

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Malaysia government has called for schools and parents to collaborate in nurturing the culture of reading among children, as there is no formalised programme for a more active involvement of parents in academic matters. Based on the positive results of school-home partnership of past studies, this study proposed a formalised partnership, i.e. the Smart Partnership in Reading in English (SPIRE) project. The six month project aimed to foster a partnership among the teacher, parents and children in an English storybook reading programme. It involved 25 multiracial five year old children, 25 parents and a class teacher. The parents, in partnership, with the teacher scaffold the children's reading development by reading storybooks to the children at home. Qualitative data gathered via interviews, teacher journals and home visits showed the children largely benefited from the teacher and parents collaboration. The outcome of the study was the formation of two levels of partnerships, firstly, the formation of a teacher-parent partnership, where the teacher scaffolds the parents, who in turn scaffold the children's development of reading skills at home. Secondly, the family partnership, where all family members, including extended family members were involved in scaffolding the children's reading development. This partnership also positively influenced the other children and teachers beyond the participating group. Another pertinent outcome was a clear link between the levels of partnership and the children's reading progress. The closer the parents worked with the teacher, the better was the children's reading progress. Similar partnership can also leave conventional splits in EFL context in the past and genuine sharing of responsibilities for EFL literacy development in the future.

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SPIRE Project: Parental Involvement in Young Children’s ESL Reading Development

Cited by 15 publications

References 29 publications

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

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

Parental Involvement in a Program for Preschoolers Learning a Foreign Language

The PaCT: Parents, Children and Teacher Partnership in Developing ESL Literacy

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