When speaking of the child’s development as of a sophisticated socio-cognitive process, it is of paramount importance to acknowledge the fact that the positive learning outcomes are impossible to achieve without the integration of various environments. Hence, the exercise of learning potential solely on the school or kindergarten premises is by no means beneficial for the child’s perception of learning and social adaptation (Tambyraja, 2017).
One of the major reasons for that is that educators are to allocate time and resources equally for every student, meaning that there is a poor chance for the teacher to identify all the literacy learning peculiarities of each individual. The family support, on the other hand, is able to dedicate the attention to the learning aspects children feel rather insecure about in order to make their school performance an enjoyable experience. According to the researchers, the idea of communication between teachers and parents is of paramount significance for both sides (Carter, 2016). While teachers obtain valuable insights in terms of approaching the child, parents have the ability to consult a professional whenever they need support.
Moreover, it is necessary to dwell on some ways family intervention in the literacy extension contributes to positive learning outcomes. The issue especially concerns bilingual families, as their kids tend to feel a lack of confidence when practicing English literacy activities (Jalongo, 2014). Hence, according to Jalongo (2014), the family’s role description includes:
- The audience for literacy events. When children perform any literacy activity, they require not only the educators’ guidance but the parents’ support throughout the process. The range of support is not generally limited to the activity type or age, as children tend to feel safer whenever they are supported by family.
- Encouragement and motivation. Being a part of various communicative situations, parents have the opportunity to observe the process of literacy extension and stimulate the child to put more effort into the interaction.
Hence, having considered this information, it may be concluded that the notion of home-to-school connection is of paramount importance both for the cognitive and social development of a student. By experiencing both teacher and family’s support, the child learns the patterns of confident behavior while observing the examples of beneficial interaction between individuals.
Reading comprehension is an integral part of literacy development, as it helps the children identify the necessary information in the text and correlate with both previous experiences and possible communicative situations in the future. Thus, when working with any text, it is the teacher’s responsibility to ensure such reflection techniques as text-to-self, text-to-text, and text-to-world connections (Elturki, 2017). Thus, the notion of text-to-self connection stands for the student’s ability to correlate the text content with personal experiences in order to obtain a better understanding and memorize the information provided.
The peculiarities of human perception of the surrounding world have always regarded the presence of both theoretical and empirical knowledge in order to make the information resonate with the learner through experiences. Hence, when improving reading comprehension, it is important for the educator to help students identify the pieces of information that resonate with them and enable the learner’s skills to analyze the experience and make explicit connections between the communicative situations. As a result, when students perceive the content through the prism of personal experience, they have the ability to develop an interest in the topic and find genuine pleasure in the process of reading.
References
Carter, L. (2016). The reflection connection: Teachers in touch with families. Parents Exchange, 52-55.
Elturki, E. (2017). Making connections intro: Skills and strategies for academic reading by Jessica Williams & David Wiese. Reading in a Foreign Language, 29(2), 264-268.
Jalongo, M. R. (2014). Early childhood language arts (6th ed.). Pearson.
Tambyraja, S. (2017). The literacy link: Reading activities as a mechanism to strengthen family engagement. Literacy Today, 12-13.