Kindergarten Writing: Utilizing Funds of Knowledge in a Digital Classroom

Introduction

Igor wrote stories like this every week. As much as I would encourage him to write more about other events, this is what he wrote. Over the year, through informal rushed conversations with his parents, I learned a little more about Igor and his family, like how they loved Metallica and making Pelmeni, a Russian pasta dish, from scratch. When I mentioned Pelmeni during a writing conference his face lit up and he began telling me all about making it with his mom and sister, and he quickly wrote a story that he was so proud to share. This personal information about Igor’s home life led me to have more authentic conversations around his writing.

I teach Kindergarten at an elementary school in Northern California where the families speak over 30 different languages and forty-four percent of students are classified as English Learners. I use the Writing Units of Study (Calkins, Louis & Cunningham, 2013) to guide my Writers Workshop instruction. Student choice in their topic is a driving force behind the workshop, engaging students in their writing about their lives and interests. However, it is also a roadblock for many students like Igor. Writing is a complex cognitive process (Flower & Hayes, 1981) that requires the orchestration of many levels of thinking. For students learning to write for the first time it can be an overwhelming task. This leads to a lot of stories being written that exclude the exciting events taking place outside of school. This may be because they feel that school and home are disconnected that they do not relate to one another. Research shows that students who feel a connection between their home culture and language and their school life are more likely to attend school consistently and score higher on standardized assessments (Sheldon & Jung, 2018). I hoped to see how an increased home-school connection would impact students’ ability to write about topics that reflected their lives. I knew that parent involvement would be key to building this connection between school and home.

At my school, every teacher has a web page to communicate monthly learning objectives to parents. The school sends home a weekly newsletter, puts on afterschool events, and has an active Parent Teacher Student Association. Just like a lot of other schools, there is infrastructure in place to communicate information to the families we serve. Parents are encouraged to email the administrator or teacher if they have any questions or concerns. But there is a lack of opportunity for families to share the events that take place at home or the language that they speak to the school.

There is a plethora of research on the importance of parental involvement on students’ academic achievement; a Google search for “parent involvement in education” gets over 2 million links on the topic. The research describes how different forms of communication from teachers to families (e.g.: newsletters, phone calls home, and creating school websites) improve students' behavior and academic achievement in all subject matters, from elementary to high school (Daniel, Wang, & Berthelsen, 2016; Griner & Stewart, 2013; Jeynes, 2007). It is widely accepted that the more information parents have about their child’s education, the better the child does at school (Keyes, 2002).

It is accepted that the more a teacher knows about a student, the better they can support them in the classroom (van Kraayenoord & Paris, 1996). Home visits have long been lauded as an effective tool in reciprocal communication between teachers and families but are not a part of most early childhood education programs (Johnston & Mermin, 1994). Recent studies (e.g.: Sheldon & Jung, 2018) confirm the value of home visits in creating a strong home and school bond. However, the barriers to home visits include time, funding, and language differences. Schools need to find a way to build strong and trusting relationships with parents using a reciprocal approach, like home visits that are feasible for teachers and families. This is especially important for supporting the underserved communities and classified English Learners who generally score below English only students on standardized tests.