A r c h i v e d  I n f o r m a t i o n

Boston University and Chelsea Public Schools Home School Portfolio Project

Jeanne R. Paratore
Boston University

Barbara Krol-Sinclair
Chelsea Public Schools

Despite consensus that parents are essential to children's early learning, questions remain about how to establish collaborative relationships between parents and teachers. These problems are accentuated with immigrant families, when the culture of the home may be very different from the culture of the school. Recent research shows that children from families who are linguistically and culturally different from the mainstream engage in rich and important literacy practices at home. Too often these literacy activities are either unfamiliar to, or go unrecognized by, the children's early childhood and elementary school teachers. As a consequence, these children are often perceived as entering school with literacy and language deficits and their parents are often thought to be disengaged or disinterested in their children's schooling.

The Boston University/Chelsea Public Schools Early Childhood Home-School Portfolio Project was designed to create a bridge between children's home and school by providing immigrant parents with a systematic way to document their children's home literacy experiences. In addition, it engages parents and teachers in conversations about children's literacy learning at home and at school.

The project has three core activities: (1) during family literacy classes, parents share the ways they promote the learning of language, reading and writing at home, discuss new ways to share such with their children, and learn to document their children's uses of emergent reading and writing in a family literacy portfolio; (2) during after-school seminars, early childhood and primary-grade classroom teachers explore the ways families use literacy in the course of every day activities and ways to build on family routines to support children's emergent language development and learning in school; (3) during parent-teacher conferences, parents and teachers exchange children's home and school literacy portfolios as a way for each to learn about how children use literacy at home and at school.

During the first year of this three-year project, 30 parent-teacher dyads participated in these activities. Using parent and teacher questionnaires with all 30 dyads, a series of three in-depth interviews with a random sampling of ten dyads, and audiotapes of two parent-teacher conferences for each of the dyads, we are examining the results. First, what influence do the project activities have on parents' beliefs and understandings about their role in schools? In addition, we are examining teachers' beliefs and understandings about the role that parents play in their children's schooling; changes in parent-teacher interactions; and changes in teacher-child interactions. While data are now being fully prepared and analyzed, an examination of partial data sets suggests some encouraging preliminary findings

• Teachers were surprised at the quality and range of literacy activities children engaged in at home on their own and with family members.

• In some cases, teachers observed that children were doing academically more advanced work at home, and they revised classroom instruction accordingly.

• In some cases, teachers adapted innovative activities that parents had used with their children at home for use in the classroom.

• Parents said that the family literacy portfolio increased the amount of literacy activities in which children were engaged.

• In some cases, the portfolios provided evidence that recommendations made by teachers had been incorporated within the family's daily routines.

• Parents and teachers agreed that the family literacy portfolio improved their interaction during the parent-teacher conference. After using the portfolio as the basis for parent-teacher conference, one teacher described it as "the best conference I ever had."

During the second year of this three-year project, we will continue the same activities. Many of the teachers and parents who participated during the first year have asked to continue to participate in the project. In addition, we will add 30 new parent-teacher dyads and continue to collect data in the same ways.

For more information on the Boston University/Chelsea Public Schools Home School Portfolio Project please contact Jeanne Paratore at (617) 353-3285.

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