Parents play a critical role in supporting their child to develop the emergent literacy skills that lay the foundation for academic success. But are they aware of what these key skills are and how they can most effectively nurture them?

Drawing on content from the Hanen guidebook, I’m Ready!™ How to Prepare Your Child for Reading Success, this e-Seminar shows professionals how they can support parents to nurture their child’s early literacy skills during shared book reading and everyday activities and conversations.

Participants learn a step-by-step coaching framework for supporting parents to use practical, evidence-based strategies to promote the following pillars of early literacy:

• Conversation
• Vocabulary
• Story comprehension
• Print knowledge
• Sound awareness

After completing this e-Seminar, you will be able to:

• Explain the connection between emergent literacy development and later literacy and academic success.
• Outline the evidence that supports the critical role of parents in fostering the development of emergent literacy skills in their child.
• Describe literacy facilitating strategies that support children’s development of vocabulary, narrative understanding, inferential and decontextualized language, print knowledge and phonological awareness.
• Draw on principles of family-centred service and adult learning to apply a step by step framework for coaching parents to implement literacy facilitating strategies.
• Analyze parent-child interactions for the presence or absence of appropriate literacy facilitating strategies and plan appropriate instructional goals for the parents.