Ways to celebrate National Family Literacy Month with Reading Partners

There is a lot to honor and celebrate in the month of November. Maybe you honored your ancestors during Day of the Dead. Maybe you’ve attended events in honor of Veterans Day or Native American Heritage Month. Or maybe you’re planning your upcoming Thanksgiving or Friendsgiving feast. 

In the midst of all these special days, we also want to invite you to celebrate National Family Literacy Month with us!

Background on National Family Literacy Month

The National Center for Families Learning (NCFL) worked with Congress to designate November 1st as National Family Literacy Day over 30 years ago, and since then, it’s become a month-long celebration. This month, NCFL encourages folks to pursue their own education goals, to engage in learning opportunities with the whole family, and to celebrate the work of local agencies and organizations that support family literacy.

To join in the celebration, we want to highlight the partnerships that have allowed Reading Partners to expand our family literacy programs. In 2019, we started strategizing about how we could go beyond the individualized tutoring happening in our reading centers to more directly support students’ families. Now we’re reaching more families than ever, thanks to our wonderful partners across all sectors and regions. Read on to learn more about our work and how you can participate with your own families and communities!

Photo by RDNE Stock project

Family Engagement Powered by RP

Through family engagement powered by Reading Partners, we collaborate with external organizations to bring literacy resources to families in their communities. This work started in early 2023 with an Oklahoma Headstart program, Community Action Project of Tulsa County (CAP Tulsa). Reading Partners trained the parent educators at CAP Tulsa to lead family literacy workshops using our family engagement curriculum and supplemental materials, offered in both English and Spanish. The CAP Tulsa team has adapted these resources to serve families across many of their programs: 

• CAP Connect: families of Headstart graduates
• Learning@Home: families of children ages 0-3
• English as a Second Language classes: parents and caregivers of Headstart students

We continued this collective impact work by partnering with the NYC education department’s Office of Family and Community Empowerment (FACE). Last year, the Reading Partners NYC team led virtual family literacy workshops that combined our family engagement curriculum with the science of reading training we provide for our AmeriCorps members. This effort resulted in 1,260+ families learning how to build the five pillars of literacy with their elementary school children. Reading Partners also trained family ambassadors to be literacy champions in their neighborhoods. This year, we’ve collaborated with Literacy in Community (LINC) to provide more professional development and adaptable activities to FACE staff as they continue to work with families and children throughout the district.

“Reading once felt distant to me, but now it is a part of my voice – as a mother, a storyteller, and community builder. And, I’m ready to help others find their way too.”

 — Family Ambassador with FACE

Are you interested in bringing family engagement powered by Reading Partners to your community? Let us know by following this link!

GreenLight Newark

Family engagement powered by Reading Partners has continued to grow since those inaugural partnerships. In the fall of 2024, Reading Partners began to team up with schools and community organizations across Newark, NJ, thanks to a major investment from GreenLight Greater Newark. Since then, we have hosted family literacy workshops for over a thousand families. Parent facilitators and other community leaders have served as co-facilitators, ensuring that our workshops are inclusive for all families who want to participate. These workshops have occurred: 

• in person and online 
• in the morning and evening 
• in school buildings and bookstores
• with groups of all sizes and 
• across multiple languages

The engagement truly has been phenomenal: 97% of families agree that they learned a new skill during these workshops. Each family also receives a representative book and a gift card from us so that they can build their home libraries and continue to apply what they learned during our time with them. 

Audible

Starting this month, participants of workshops in select locations are receiving access to audiobooks through a pilot with Audible as well. We hope to expand to more locations and families in the future. For now, we have 300 licenses dedicated to families across these networks:

• Newark, NJ in partnership with GreenLight Greater Newark
• Detroit, MI in partnership with Brilliant Detroit 
• Memphis, TN in partnership with Literacy Mid-South 

Participating in family workshops is just one way families can engage with us—we have two more avenues for families to learn together, regardless of their location. 

The Achievery

Last year, the Reading Partners team created 50 literacy skill videos in partnership with the AT&T Achievery. Kids and families can review and practice a wide range of skills across all five pillars of reading: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. The Achievery also hosts skill-building videos from 26 other collaborators that span grades K-12: 

• Digital arts 
• Digital literacy 
• English language & arts
• Math
• Science 
• Social-emotional learning
• Technology and engineering

During our first year, 6,880 families accessed our materials on the Achievery, and we hope more and more families will connect in the years to come. Families simply need to register here and use the code READ to access all this content for free! Once you’ve registered, you can find all of Reading Partners’ videos in one place with this direct link. 

Lantern

Formerly known as Bright by Text, Reading Partners partnered with Lantern during the pandemic to bring literacy tips to families via text message, which is highly accessible for families of all backgrounds. These messages are differentiated by children’s age and family zip code. We are thrilled to be collaborating with them again this year—we anticipate that over 100,000 families will receive our literacy tips, which is over 30 times more families than we reached in 2020! We will also provide links to our video content and a calendar of activities for families to use. You can sign up here to start receiving expert-curated tips for your own family!

Closing

Whether you are looking to bring family engagement powered by Reading Partners to your own community or looking for skill-building videos and activities for your family, we hope you feel inspired to celebrate National Family Literacy Month with us! We’d also like to invite you to check out our parent and caregiver resources on our blog, our website, and our Resource Hub. Happy reading and learning to you and your loved ones, this month and all year long!

Banner image by Kindel Media