Pelletier – Family Literacy Project

And then, I guess the biggest study I’ve been involved in, for a few years now, is the Family Literacy Project that began out in the region of Peel which is an area outside of Toronto. The population is at least 60% second or third language, English second or third language, with a range of socio-economic backgrounds. So, the program is a collaboration between the region of Peel which is a municipal government, the Institute of Child Study at Oise and a number of other partners. It’s now operating in 72 schools. It was designed as an evening workshop where families would come into the school in the evening with their preschool children. So, typically they were between three and six years of age. 

 And there would be a program offered—again for 12 weeks—kind of based on the earlier model but this time the focus would just be literacy development. So the students and I, along with our partners in the Peel region, developed a curriculum and it was based on the best evidence we had at the time from research on what are the best things that families can do to help their children at home. So, what kinds of home literacy practices best help children. So that’s how the program evolved and I’ve been carrying out the research for a number of years, and then my graduate students have extended the research in different contexts.