1 Eugenia Zevgiti Family involvement is a powerful element of effective literacy instruction- many researches show that parental involvement improves student achievement, attitudes towards learning and self –esteem. Once a month sessions with the parents of the 6 th grade students setting up literacy goals and sharing literacy practices. Mum and Dad go to school Parent involvement in schools: engaging parents as partners

2 Connections with Colleagues During discussions among the meeting staff there were a lot of questions about family involvement. All the colleagues agreed that many children who could benefit from literacy activities are the same children whose parents are the most difficult to involve. Many colleagues are not ready to accept low – educated parents come in to the school. They claim that they will have high demands.

3Successes Increasing parent attendance in the monthly discussing hopes for their children and how to improve student achievement. Parents feel that they have directions on how they can become actively and succesfully involved. Parents helped create different documents in multiple languages so that they can be used at home on how to help children.

4Challenges Legislation which governs public education does not prescribe parental participation in schools outside a Parent Association. For any activity there should be approval on behalf of state school advisers and the primary education officers. Denial of some colleagues to accede to parents’ participation in literary activities. They believe that this will be the beginning of many more demands, such as their participation in the teaching staff meetings. School principal is always absent – that discourages parents from feeling welcome at school.

5 Next Steps Use family welcome questionnaires to learn more about: a) family schedules b) family cultural values Creation of family literacy programmes (conferences, literacy evenings, other events) on a monthly or weekly basis. Connection to the National Book Center for the implementation of the “Writers of literacy books and Illustrators in schools” programme.