1. Including Parents
Name Maria Ourania Gkioka Topic Parents as Partners: Involving Parents in Literacy Development Rationalizing my choice I decided to report on this topic because I believe that through the involvement of parents in Literacy Development more than one benefits can be achieved. Firstly, I think that the literal skills of children will be improved. Secondly, I believe parents will start having ‘meaningful and wholesome moments’ with their children. Finally, I aspire that this involvement of parents will promote the collaboration between school and family, which could lead to an inclusive school culture that has many positive results to give. Participants I implemented the Fast Start (FS) program to three grade 1 students. 1

2. Connections with Colleagues
During a brief meeting that I had with my two colleagues, I outlined the basic characteristics of the FS program and the effective results that current research findings attribute to it.
Then I asked them to express their first thoughts about the program and to inform me if they wanted to pilot it at our school.
Through that discussion, it became clear that all of them were keen on the idea of implementing this program to some of our students.
We decided that each of us will pilot it with one student of grade 1. We agreed to have a meeting with students’ parents as well, in order to present them the FS program and to give them instructions about what they have to do. 2

3. Successes The piloting of the program gave immediate results:
Students have started being more confident about their reading skills. This is obvious by the fact that they have started reading aloud more often in the classroom without being shy anymore.
Parents have started developing a better and more close relationship with the school of their children. They have started visiting school more often. In addition their have started asking teachers about other methods apart from the FS program- that they could use in order to help their children’s academic skills. In general, I think that they have started realizing that they do can help their children, if only someone shows them the way. 3

4. Challenges
The challenges that my school experienced in its try to implement the FS program were:
The difficulty to arrange the first meeting with the parents, because of their hectic program. Finally, we overcome this challenge by arranging the meeting during weekend.
The difficulty to determine the way that they will inform us about their experiences and give us their feedback on the FS program. Finally, we decided to communicate once per week via and to have meetings only once per month. 4

5. Next Steps
Our school is thinking to organize an event at which the parents of all grade 1 students will be invited . At this event parents-participants and teachers-participants will present their reflections on the FS program in order to motivate the rest of the parents and teachers to use this program as well. 5