One of the ways that we honor our abolitionist roots and commitment to our neighborhood is by supporting access and opportunities to literacy initiatives. Building off the success of our school partnerships, our Literacy Director, Martina, has been developing a series of exciting Family Literacy Workshops. For the past year, she has been leading sessions for caregivers and this spring will be working to train the Library Coordinators at each of our schools to run them for their own school communities, so that we can have even more of an impact.
In her most recent session at Bethune Elementary, caregivers came to the library while the kids had breakfast. For many, it was the first time seeing where their children get to go weekly for our read alouds, check outs, and literacy activities. Martina facilitated a discussion that was largely driven by the caregivers and covered topics including:
- reading together, even for 10 minutes a day, can be valuable
- knowing your child’s interests and letting that guide book selection
- modeling to children – they read and write when we read and write!
- reading age appropriate books to help capture your child’s attention
- utilizing the public libraries as resources
An important part of this workshop is sharing curated books and doing book talks to share what works well for that age group (song books, dialogue books, rhyming books, wordless books, etc) and discussing why. Participants get to pick from a large selection of news books to take to build out their own home libraries, as well as community-based literacy and parenting resources. At Bethune, the school’s Pre-K liaison also gave each participant a new copy of The 5 Love Languages of Children. We’ve found that these workshops are particularly meaningful when we partner with another member of the school community.
For the second part of this workshop, students came up to the library to join their caregivers with everyone gathered around for a fun storytime. Martina used the opportunity to model what reading aloud with your child can look like and also shared some her favorite books. They sang songs, used puppets, got silly, moved their bodies- all as means for having fun with reading! The caregivers loved to see their children engaging with the storytime and the opportunity for the families to bond around reading and singing together is so special. One parent also shared how important it was to her, saying, “Library time and read alouds expand the children’s vocabulary and help them view the world in the stories they read.”
Research suggests that the home practices encouraged in our workshops, such as joint reading, drawing, singing, storytelling, reciting, game playing, and rhyming, help develop children’s early literacy skills. In the hustle and bustle of everyday life, it can be hard for folks to carve out the space for just having FUN with books – which is the springboard to a love of reading!
Making space for this feels important and Martina and our library coordinators are looking forward to continuing this model of workshops in 2025. We’re also looking ahead to the warm summer months to revisit our Wondrous Wednesdays series, which we hope many families will enjoy, as well!
You can read more about additional literacy initiatives here – Fairhill Readers; Reading Buddies; More Parent Assistants; Re-opening Bethune’s Library
