Bilingual Books Can Help Teachers and English Learners

One of the challenges that ESL Teachers and English Learners face today is that students may not have the resources to have books at home, or parents may not fully understand the importance of having books in the home, or even how to read with their children. Research about Second Language Acquisition Theory demonstrates the importance of fostering home language, … Read More

Helping Young Children by Reaching Out to Parents with Books

Generally, children who are exposed to language and reading at a very young age are more likely to have a chance to excel in their educational pursuits. The New York Times (NYT) shares that Nobel Prize-winning economist James Heckman said, “The greatest barrier to college education is not high tuitions or the risk of student debt; it’s in the skills … Read More

Parental Engagement Resources for Hispanic Parents

One of the biggest obstacles to student achievement is a lack of parental involvement in a child’s academic pursuits. For Hispanic students, this can be a challenge to negotiate due to the difficulties their parents sometimes face when it comes to finding the proper outlets or resources to engage in a meaningful manner. At the heart of the problem is … Read More

Parental Involvement and the Impact on School Success

Parental Involvement and the Impact on School Success There is little debate that a parent’s engagement in a child’s learning is highly beneficial. A number of studies have shown the extent of the positive impacts that healthy parental involvement can provide with marked improvements in attendance, behavioral patterns, and social skills, as well as better grades and test scores, resulting … Read More

California’s New Funding Law: The Latest Information for LCAP and Family Engagement

Governor Jerry Brown’s Local Control Funding Formula Initiative (LCFF) is California’s recent funding law that puts the most comprehensive emphasis yet on the importance of family and other stakeholders in the educational progress of school children in grades K-12. Through the Local Control and Accountability Plan (LCAP), a vital component of the initiative, school districts are tasked with meeting eight specific … Read More

A New Framework for Hispanic Parent Programs

A New Framework for Hispanic Parent Programs Now that Parent Involvement is such a strong national focus, it is important to provide teachers with a whole new framework for Hispanic Parent Programs, if we want parents and kids to become life long readers. Harris County Department of Education formed the Cooperative for After-School Enrichment, or CASE, in 1999 to mobilize … Read More

What is Cultural Competence in the Classroom?

As defined by the National Education Association, cultural competence is “the ability to successfully teach students who come from a culture or cultures other than our own. It entails developing certain personal and interpersonal awareness and sensitivities, understanding certain bodies of cultural knowledge, and mastering a set of skills that, taken together, underlie effective cross-cultural teaching and culturally responsive teaching.” … Read More

Middle / High Parent Involvement for College Awareness

There are many ways for parents to be involved with kids in Preschool and Elementary grades, but what about when kids are in middle school and high school at the very time in their lives when their developmental age is naturally pushing their parents away? In the middle and high school years, students may be seeking more autonomy from their … Read More

Getting Parents of English Learners Involved in California Public Schools

english learners in california California law states, “the government and the public schools of California have a moral obligation and a constitutional duty to provide all of California’s children, regardless of their ethnicity or national origins, with the skills necessary to become productive members of our society, and of these skills, literacy in the English language is among the most … Read More

Award-Winning Bilingual Books & Parent Programs with English Learners

Below are award-winning bilingual books published by Lectura Books for The Latino Family Literacy Project™. Parents who are Spanish-speakers and English-speakers enjoy these bilingual books with their children because these stories are culturally relevant and meaningful. And that means that they have so much more to talk about when they read them with their children. These books are in our … Read More