A Strong Home-School Connection

Learning the alphabet is exciting, but it’s not easy! It also takes time for children to understand stories. Invite families to partner with you in helping children grow as readers. These are some ideas for connecting: • Send children home with a mission to take a picture of things in their home or neighborhood that begin with the target letter-sound. Adults at home can email you or post to a site of yours. • Start a family alphabet book that each child gets to take home and contribute to. Invite families to add pictures with labels. When it’s complete, laminate it and read aloud to the class. • Challenge families to come up with tongue twisters together. Then give children a chance to read them to the class—with your support, of course! • Extend conversations about characters by asking children to discuss characters in stories they read at home. Ask what problems characters have and how they solve them. • Keep track of different settings in stories. Make a chart, and ask children to add to it for each story set in similar places as those in the Student Letter

Books, such as a city or a snowy place. • Encourage families (at open houses, through emails, at other school events) to review skills you’re teaching so that children can keep focused on learning at home.

More Digital Resources

Visit the A–Z for Mat Man® and Me Interactive Teaching Tool for resources, including Family Letters and printable Student Letter Books.

AT HOME TIPS

Tips to help with common mistakes with the target letter

LETTER LEARNING

Fun, actionable alphabet activities for families to do together

MEANING MAKING

Ideas for talking about books