Effective Literary Resources to Support Adolescent Parents Ensuring Kindergarten Readiness for Their Children

Abstract

Adolescent parents often lack the skills needed in order to provide their children with the proper supports that promote efficient growth in several areas dealing with early literacy skills such as letter identification, vocabulary, and phonological awareness. When these children then enter school, they have not acquired the skills they need to be academically successful. To address the problem of adolescent parents needing more support to help foster early literacy skills at home, the research question focused on what are effective resources teachers can provide adolescent parents to help support early literacy practice at home as well as how can teachers show these parents how to use them effectively on their own? To answer that question, an extended literature review and research synthesis were completed and produced multiple findings. The findings were; adolescent parents needed more support in order to provide a larger amount of involvement with their child, letter identification, letter sounds, phonological awareness, vocabulary, lap reading, and concepts about print were the skills adolescent parents should have practiced with their children before kindergarten, adolescent parents required more strategies in responsive parenting and behavior management plans, and with the right support systems in place, adolescent parents could foster a proper at home literacy environment. These findings were the foundation of the professional development project presented through a multimedia application for adolescent parents. This application allowed parents to receive the guidance they needed in order to practice the literacy skills needed for Kindergarten.