Family Literacy Nights: Promoting Child Literacy at Home

Purpose of the Study: The purpose of this project is to see how parental support of young children’s literacy learning changes as a result of Family Literacy Nights. Family Literacy Nights include promoting positive relationships between families and teachers, modeling appropriate early literacy activities, and providing families with information to help them work on literacy at home with their child. Each of these aspects helps to foster a child’s emergent literacy. Procedure: To carry out this study there were a total of three Family Literacy Nights and each included a survey that was filled out by the adults in attendance. There was also a survey after the nights had finished asking why families did or did not attend. Findings: There was a low attendance at the Family Literacy Nights, which showed that the nights needed to be better advertised. It was also found that families were using the activities they learned about from these nights at home with their children. Conclusions: Families need to be made more aware of future Family Literacy Nights and there needs to be childcare provided. The availability of activities that families can take home that night and easily replicate is essential.