Literacy Interventions that Promote Home-to-School Links for Ethnoculturally Diverse Families of Young Children

Abstract

From the moment children come into the world, they begin to participate in everyday activities within their communities that play a critical role in shaping their development. As children take part in these everyday activities, they develop the cognitive, language, and socio-emotional skills, as well as the social knowledge and competence needed to become full-fledged members of their community. Through this process, they acquire a toolkit of cultural resources that can be drawn upon as they take action and make meaning in their everyday lives. This toolkit continuously expands as children grow, develop, and are exposed to different ways of being, doing, thinking, acting, and learning. In this chapter, we argue that capitalizing on these cultural resources can foster children’s early educational success, not only through the acquisition of new knowledge and skills but also by forging positive and productive home-school connections. In doing so, we review interventions that integrate the cultural practices of Latino families as points of leverage to support young children’s early language and literacy development.