Parent Involvement Committee > Idea in Action
First Language lending library
Sir Isaac Brock Public School has almost 800 students and a large and culturally diverse population with over 20 languages spoken. A challenge for us is to reach out to parents who are newcomers to Canada, welcoming them to our school and supporting them as they learn the language and culture of school.
Based on an idea from our ESL teacher, we have asked parents who speak the languages of our students and are fluent in English to translate basic readers into other languages. In this way, we are encouraging parent engagement through the creation of books that will assist children to learn to read. We partnered with our local Immigrant Services branch for help contacting parents and helping us organize and facilitate the initial parent meeting.
We used photo-copyable picture books downloaded from a curriculum website where we have a subscription-based license. Books with high-frequency words used in context maximize the benefit to the readers who are new to the English language. We have developed and are continuing to develop a library of curriculum related translated readers that newcomer parents can use to help their children learn English. One of these translated books was handed out in various languages at our Junior Kindergarten Learning Fair to new families to our school who speak other languages than English and it was very gratefully received. These books will also be availabe to our ELL's to be taken home by students as part of their daily reading homework.
We have been told by parents that these books will be useful in helping their children learn their native language as well.
This project has offered an opportunity for newcomer parents to become meaningfully involved in their child's education. We feel we are more fully able to welcome and support these parents with very particular needs and challenges in a new way.
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