Effects of Parental Involvement in Developing Competent Readers in First Grade

The development of reading proficiency in children is perhaps the highest-ranking educational objective of legislators, administrators, teachers, parents, and the community. There is an intense interest in the development of proficient readers, and stringent criticism against education for its failure to bring all students up to acceptable literacy levels. While much of the responsibility for improvingreading proficiency has fallen on the shoulders of the classroom teacher, research has indicated that parental involvement in a child's learning to read is critical (Heilman, Blair, & Rupley, 1998). The purpose of this study was to determine if parental training and involvement in the teaching of selected reading lessons increased their first-grade children's' reading levels. Eight first-grade students reading below grade level participated in the study?four were assigned to the experimental group and four served as a control group. The parents of the experimental group received training in selected components of the Reading Recovery model, which they implemented in home lessons based on a ''Books in Bags'' strategy developed by the teacher. During the five weeks of the study, the teacher shared daily instructional materials with the parents three times each week. The students in the control group did not have access to this program. At the conclusion of the study, the teacher used informal assessments to evaluate the reading levels of both groups of students. The students involved in the study made significant gains when compared to the gains of the control group.