Sarah has brought out two very important elements necessary to make PACT effective.  

One element she outlines is using specific reading strategies so that the parents have an answer to their question, "What do I do to help my child read?" These techniques she explains below even work with wordless books since the techniques are based on fostering emergent literacy skills such as listening, predicting and confirming.  Far from stiff and formulaic, giving parents tools to use empowers them in their role as their children's teacher.  These strategies are not based on the parents ability to read and therefore work well with parents who are low level readers.

The second element she brings out is teaching the parents those strategies and letting them practice during *parent time.* Interactive reading is not intuitive.  The practicing is so important so that the parents begin to understand the technique and (again as Sarah said) begin to use the "wait" time to allow their child to respond.  Teaching reading strategies during parent time has the side benefit of providing a natural integration between the two components.

Are those of you working with ESL families teaching parents these or other reading strategies?


-----Original Message-----
From: familyliteracy-bounces at nifl.gov
[mailto:familyliteracy-bounces at nifl.gov]On Behalf Of Sarah Beaman-Jones
Sent: Monday, September 11, 2006 3:02 PM
To: The Family Literacy Discussion List
Subject: [FamilyLiteracy 368] Re: Scenario - Parent Child Activities


Research has shown us that in order for parents to engage with their 
children in literacy activities during PACT, they must be taught 
specific techniques and given a chance to practice these techniques 
during parent time.  We use to say, "read to your child!"  Then we 
learned that there is reading and then there is interactive 
[dialogic] reading.
Specific techniques include CAR, CROWD and PEER.

C =comment and wait so the child has time to respond
A=ask questions and wait so the child has time to respond
R=respond by adding a little more and wait.

The waiting has to do with the fact that a child needs time to 
process and formulate a response.  I have made parents little count 
out eight seconds under their breath to teach them waiting skills.

P=Prompt.  Ask the child a question about something on the page
E=Evaluate  Think about what the child says
E-Expand  Either gently correct or add information.
R= Repeat  Ask the child the repeat the correct information or 
additional information

C=Completion  Useful in rhymes.  Let child complete phrase
R=Recall  Ask child what details about story
O=Open-ended  "Tell me what's going on in this picture."
W=What, where, why  Asking questions specific to the picture or story.
D=Distancing Ask questions that relate the story to the child's life.

This may sound stiff and formulaic, but in reality it can be very 
conversational and easy.  The trick is to teach each technique 
seperately and allow enough time to practice before trying it out on 
the children.  This works with ESOL also and low literate parents 
because of the practice time.
-- 
Sarah Beaman-Jones
Literacy Program Developer
LIFT-Missouri
815 Olive Street, Suite 22
St. Louis, MO 63101
1-800-729-4443
1-314-678-4443 x206
1-314-678-2938 [fax]
http://lift-missouri.org
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