10 Activities for Parents to Support Children in Early Language & Literacy

Recently, Macmillan Education International Curriculum https://www.macmillanic.com/ invited me to speak about engaging parents in their children’s  language and literacy in an impactful way.

It is a familiar subject to us all and I have spoken about it on many previous occasions both in the UK and internationally. This was an online webinar for an international audience to run twice: once for teachers and once for parents. I was delighted that we attracted large audiences from around the world for both which is a tribute to Macmillan Education’s marketing skills, but more poignantly to the on-going need for this topic.

To provide the webinar content, I set about updating my own knowledge and created a list: What ten most impactful activities could we share with parents to ensure a collaborative approach to supporting their children in early language and literacy?

The list stressed the importance of inviting support across the skills of speaking, listening, reading and writing when often it seems that we resort to just reading and sometimes just phonics. There are multifarious layers of language and literacy that parents can enjoy with their children with important and long-lasting benefits.

A gentle reminder that learning is not usually linear and progress is often granular was well received. The session finished with a forceful reminder that teachers and parents are more impactful when working together.

The webinar is available here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cA8YwmEDF1s