Enhancing Parent Engagement While Reading Online and at Home

Introduction

While this project began as one teacher’s desire to look deeper into parent involvement with reading at home, it quickly pivoted as COVID-19 began impacting schools. The goal of this study was to identify ways to increase parent engagement with their children as they complete assigned homework. The motivation for the teacher-researcher was to learn more about the new direction of teaching online and find ways to make it easier for colleagues, parents, and children to be excited about reading online. Even though the hectic nature of constant switches between online learning, hybrid learning, and in-person learning may subside, the integration of technology into homes and classrooms is likely to continue to grow.

As a teacher-researcher, the author wanted to share experience and insights gathered from an action research project conducted in the fall of 2020, months after the pandemic began. While conducting research, the author taught kindergarten in a rural public school where the school building includes about 14 kindergarten, 15 first-grade, and 15 second-grade classrooms. In March of 2020, the school administrators made the decision to transition to 100% virtual teaching and learning for the remainder of the school year. At that time, the school had not adopted an online reading platform, and teachers did not have a way to get families hard copies of anything. To address this, over the summer of 2020, the school purchased a subscription through Learning A–Z, known as RAZ Kids. Teachers were trained at the beginning of the year by someone from the RAZ company, and then the reading specialists took over as the go-to RAZ experts. In the past, reading homework was sent home using a monthly reading log. This year, although homework at the kindergarten level had not been implemented yet, on-level texts were assigned to students individually to read to family members at home. “Libraries” of readings with on-topic information were also created for what topics were being taught in science and social studies. There is more to do, especially after learning from this unprecedented school year, but the implementation needs to be slow. As overwhelmed as teachers are, parents, too, are impacted. It is important to focus on the work the students are to complete at home, so teachers do not forget that parent engagement piece, acknowledging parent limits.

Reading at home is a task that many teachers assign for homework in early education. Even when it is not specifically assigned, in my experience, some parents still read at home as a regular part of their nighttime routine because of the known benefits. This time together is important, as it reflects joint reading which has many benefits. First, it supports student development and learning at home. This is important because early reading skills such as alphabet knowledge, phonological processing skills, and orthographic processing skills are considered to be some of the most crucial skill to learn early on (Mol & Bus, 2011). Having students read with parents at home in turn helps these skills to develop more appropriately than if they are only reading at school. Second, it provides an opportunity for family members to be involved in an academic task, showing the child that the family members value and support the school sphere. Finally, it provides an opportunity for the parent and child to engage and grow their bond in a different way. While many parents were reading regularly with their children, some parents were not. Even before the pandemic, there was a documented lack of engagement that has been attributed to the fact many parents do not have adequate resources available (Baker et al., 2010). The heightened restrictions during the pandemic have also closed public libraries for periods of time, a place where many parents of young children spend a lot of time and access ample amounts of books. Because access to these resources had been further reduced, teachers began integrating online platforms that would support reading at home. As technology integration for teaching and learning continues growing, it is important to have a clearer understanding of how parents are willing and able to engage in technology-mediated homework support. The goal of this chapter is to examine how to increase parent involvement in their child’s online reading assignments.