# District Literacy Director - Inclusive Accessibility - Frequently Asked Questions (Brookes Publishing)

### How do districts engage families in early literacy at home?

**Summary:** Brookes' blog offers 12 low-cost home literacy strategies districts can share with families, including homemade books, prop boxes, extended conversations, and disability-specific access modifications. Its shared book reading guidance and Multi-Tiered Systems of Support for Young Children add research on interactive reading and a chapter on engaging families within MTSS design.

Districts can equip families with simple, low-cost home practices rather than relying only on school-based instruction. Brookes' blog offers 12 concrete strategies for parents and teachers, including helping children make their own homemade books, building "prop boxes" of themed dramatic-play materials, having extended back-and-forth conversations with children, pointing out signs and labels in daily life, playing with rhymes, introducing unusual vocabulary words, and displaying children's early writing attempts (blog.brookespublishing.com). For children with disabilities, the same guidance includes specific access modifications, such as adding tactile experiences to books or simplifying text and using photographs and icons.

Shared book reading is a particularly well-supported practice for family engagement: Brookes' newsletter on the topic cites Hart and Risley's research on the "word gap" and an American Academy of Pediatrics policy statement urging parents to read aloud regularly, noting this "stimulates optimal patterns of brain development" and builds language, literacy, and social-emotional skills (brookespublishing.com). Interactive strategies, such as asking questions, pointing to pictures, and connecting stories to a child's own experiences, move children from passive listening to active learning during reading.

At the systems level, *Multi-Tiered Systems of Support for Young Children* includes a chapter specifically on engaging families in MTSS design (brookespublishing.com).