State Improvement Grant

SIG Toolkit SIG Literacy Toolkit:
Families Helping Children Become Better Readers: A Literacy Resource Kit for Parents
This resource kit is provided to you at no cost by staff of the Tennessee State Improvement Grant (SIG). The strategies in the book are designed for you to use to help your child succeed in school. We distribute this information to parents in a kit at a workshop that lasts between 1 and 1 1/2 hours. The kit also includes plastic letters, a student dictionary, two books, Thank You, Mr. Falker, and Amazing Sharks, a phoneme flash card game, and a sheet of magnetic words. We are happy to share this information, but if you use the materials, please reference the
Tennessee State Improvement Grant. We use a fabric bag for our kit, but a plastic bag would also work nicely.

This book has activities and resources that will help parents become more involved in your child’s education. The focus is on literacy; the ability to read, write and communicate. Literacy is important throughout life. We need reading and writing skills to be successful in school, but we also need to be able to read to live our everyday lives. Reading helps us to communicate with others, make consumer purchases, understand directions and maps, enjoy good books, and engage in many other activities that improve our lives. Literacy is used during day-to-day activities to help us “get things done”.

We have packed this book with ideas about how parents can help your children be successful in school. There are five sections:

Family Involvement - why parent support is so important for students
Reading Development - information about how children learn to read
Activities – fun ways to work with children to improve academic outcomes
Working with teachers and school personnel – includes tips for successful conferences, homework help, etc.
Special Needs – information about various disabilities and how to increase literacy in several areas

Let us know what you think about our toolkit or ways in which we can improve it. Contact Reggie at rcurran@utk.edu or 865-974-1320.

Toolkit on Teaching and Assessing Students with Disabilities
This Tool Kit, provided by the Office of Special Education Projects, brings together the most current and accurate information, including research briefs and resources designed to improve instruction, assessment, and accountability for students with disabilities in a format that is easy to access and to understand. The Tool Kit will assist state personnel, schools, and families in their efforts to ensure that all students with disabilities receive a quality education.

The Phoneme Flashcard Game
Tom Buggey, PhD, University of Memphis
Here is a fun way to help prepare your child for school. Phonemes are the sounds that make up our language – there are 44 of them. We know that children who know the phonemes when they come to school do much better in reading. In this game we focus on consonants like b, t, c, l, m… To print the cards, print back to back on cardstock or print on one-sided paper/card stock and glue back to back.

Beyond the Bake Sale: How Parent Involvement Makes a Difference
An article about the importance of parent involvement.

Family Education: What Your Child Needs to Know
This is a great website for parents, filled with lots of information about
reading, discipline, movies and entertainment, etc. - for ages 2 through high
school. You’ll find advice on every aspect of education and learning, discover
parent-approved entertainment ideas, and learn how to handle the many life
issues of your pre-K through middle and high school.

Helping Children Succeed in School
Children spend about 1,000 hours per year in school. So, helping children enjoy learning and being successful in school is an important goal for parents, other family members, and schools. It takes two major institutions, the home and the school, working together to successfully educate the child. Helping Children Succeed in School is a program written by University of Illinois Extension educators that gives successful strategies for parents and caregivers to help their children succeed in school.

Helping Your Child Succeed in School
Helping Your Child Series With activities for children ages 5 through 11.

America’s Career Resource Network
Help your children do well in school, make the most of their talents and interests, and get the education and skills they need for college and work.

The Afrocentric.com Parent Involvement Toolkit
The nuts and bolts about what can do to help your children succeed in school.

Read Write Now!
Activities for Reading and Writing Fun has been developed by national reading experts for you to use with children, ages birth to Grade 6. The booklet has three sections, one for activities for infants and preschoolers, the second for children through Grade Two, and the third for older children.

From the Florida Department of Education
The School-Home Links Reading Kit offers tips on creating community and family-school partnerships with the purpose of improving children's reading. The reading kits are a collection of research-based activities designed to help families reinforce the reading and language arts skills that their children are learning at school.

Scholastic Book Company’s website is a welcoming site for parents. Though they offer books for sale, there is also a lot of good information about parenting and reading.

Get Ready to Read!
Get Ready to Read is a national program to build the early literacy skills of preschool children. GRTR! brings research-based strategies to parents, early education professionals, and child care providers to help prepare children to learn to read and write. The site contains easy to use screening tools and activities, literacy checklists, and newsletters about reading/literacy issues. Get Ready to Read! is an initiative of the National Center for Learning Disabilities .

Talking and Reading Together
Visit the PBS Kids Website to learn how children become readers and writers and how YOU can help them develop by talking, reading, and writing together every day.

Multicultural Educational Services
This site includes literacy activities, health literacy and a section on listening to immigrants. The interactive literacy exercises provide practice in many skill areas: reading a prescription medicine label, reading an over-the-counter OTC medicine label, reading special warning labels and
information about side effects, writing a check, filling out a timesheet, filling out a basic form and reading a simple map. There are also introductions spoken and
printable on these topics in English, Arabic, Hmong and Somali.