The present study investigated home literacy environments established through reading with children, engaging in literacy activities, and having literacy materials provided, along with families' participation in literacy-related school events. One hundred one kindergarten children and their families from five classrooms in two inner-city urban elementary schools were invited to participate in the "Learning the ABCs" project. A total of 68 families gave consent. Participation in the project included receiving 15 weeks of Home Literacy Bags. The 68 participating children were randomly assigned into two intervention groups using cluster sampling of the five classes. Group One received weekly bags with four activities while Group Two received weekly bags with four activities, a variety of materials, and one book. The primary purpose of this study was to determine the strength of four family involvement variables (reading with children, engaging in literacy activities, having literacy materials provided, and participating in literacy-related events at school) in predicting kindergarten students' gain scores on three literacy assessments (ALRI, TERA-3, and DIBELS). The primary research question was: To what extent can kindergarten students' ALRI, TERA-3, and DIBELS gain scores be explained by participation in family involvement activities? A secondary purpose of the study was to determine which of the family involvement activities was the strongest predictor of kindergarten students' literacy achievement as measured by the literacy assessments. The secondary research question was: Which family involvement activity is the strongest predictor of gains in kindergarten students' letter and sound knowledge and phonological awareness? Literacy assessments were implemented using a pre/post test design. The literacy gain scores served as the dependent variables and the family involvement activities served as the independent variables. Each variable set was included in a regression analysis, which was followed up with an analysis of regression structure coefficients (rs) to determine the individual variable contributions.

The purpose of this study was to describe the home literacy environments and literacy experiences of a select group of Asian American children, and to recommend an intervention program based on the findings. The target population was the families which sent their children to a Saturday Asian language and culture school while sending them to public schools during the week, because of their expressed interest in literacy and the probability of their being the group to most likely benefit from intervention. The Home Literacy Environment and Literacy Experiences survey was initially sent out and results tallied and quantified. Upon placing the returned surveys into groups of "high," "middle," and "low" home literacy environment and literacy experiences, a sample of five "high" and five "low" families was selected for further study. Home visits, interviews, field notes, collection of artifacts and other methods of data collection provided a clearer picture of the state of the home literacy environment and literacy experiences of the families studied. Families rated as having "high" home literacy environment and experiences were found to have a larger number of literacy-related materials and higher frequency of literacy-related activities. Bilingualism and education were perceived as being important. The families also exhibited a strong interest in music and music lessons. Parents expressed a desire for two two-hour training sessions which would be held at the Saturday school location while their child attended classes there. It would be ideally held in the native language of the parents by a speaker from the native country. The parents preferred workshops with actual practice and examples which could be seen, accompanied by reading materials. Topics in which parents expressed interest include, in descending order: (a) 'selection of books for and with their child, (b) how to encourage their child to read, (c) how to discuss stories with their child, and (d) how to read aloud to their child.

Reading Literacy of Roma Pupils Thesis - Kateřina Šormová Abstract This work is a contribution to Roma pupils' literacy research. The importance of literacy for an individual today is absolutely crucial; applied research suggests that people with advanced literacy skills are more likely to have a higher self-esteem, improved health, more satisfying jobs and higher income compared to those with low literacy skills. Persons who are at greater risk of reduced literacy level are those from different cultural backgrounds, unemployed and unskilled people, those with very low level of education and people living in social exclusion. Roma pupils (very often) belong to such groups of people, therefore it is necessary to set up measures to eliminate these risks. The need to develop language competence of Roma pupils in the Czech language, including reading comprehension ability, is also included in the Roma Integration Strategy by 2020. This thesis examines whether and how the reading literacy test results of Roma and non- Roma pupils differ, and describes factors of home and school environment that influence the Roma pupils' literacy development. Based on these research questions hypotheses were set. Our research of Roma pupils' literacy was conducted in 4th and 5th grades of primary schools in socially excluded...