: Partnering with Parents: A Simple and Effective Approach to Supporting Reading at Home Empowering families to support their children’s communication and reading development at home.

Research School Director and Deputy Headteacher Claire Williams shares how Alexandra Park Primary School is empowering families to support their children’s communication and reading development at home.

Providing practical strategies for families to support their children at home is an ongoing priority for our staff team. As each cohort’s needs evolve, so do the needs of their families. What proved effective for one group may not have the same impact for another. However, we know that building strong parental relationships and engaging parents in their child’s learning is always worth our time and effort. Research evidence suggests this is particularly promising for our youngest children, with home experiences directly influencing how children engage with our curriculum and provision. That’s why we have been developing simple, accessible prompts and ideas to help families support their children’s communication and reading at home.

Recent research (Kindred Squared, 2025) highlights a potential disconnect between what parents believe children should be able to do when starting school and the challenges that school staff report children facing. Reflecting on these findings — and our conversations with families — we realised there was more we could do to support the transition to reception and strengthen our role as partners in children’s learning.

We initially introduced parents to the EEF’s TRUST model of shared reading and tips for supporting reading at home to support home learning during lockdowns. However, when reviewing our approach — guided by feedback from our parents and carers and Recommendation 1 from the EEF’s Working With Parents to Support Children’s Learning — we recognised a missed opportunity. While some families successfully adopted the model, others needed more support in understanding how to apply it at home. We suspected that this gap in understanding could be widening gaps in early literacy development.

By using the TRUST model and materials from the EEF Early Years Evidence Store on interactive reading, we developed our approach to support parents and carers. We wanted to convey the evidence to families that shared reading strategies involving spoken interactions that go beyond the text, with the child actively participating and responding, could be very beneficial for their children at home. We were also keen to ensure that parents and carers understood that the more engaged the child, the greater the development of their oral language skills. To support this, we have created videos of our staff reading with our reception children, sharing examples of what the approach could look like in a home setting. Alongside this, we are expanding opportunities for families to visit school, experience our reading areas, join in with storytelling sessions, and build confidence in supporting their child’s early literacy development.

In strengthening our partnership with parents, we are ensuring that families feel equipped to support their children’s communication and reading development at home. By embedding evidence-informed strategies, such as the EEF’s TRUST model, and offering practical, accessible resources, we are hoping to provide our families with practical and responsive support. We are working together with parents to create a culture where parents feel confident and engaged in their child’s learning journey — helping to build strong foundations for literacy and language development from the earliest years.

References/​Further reading:

EEF Early Years Evidence Store, Interactive Reading.

EEF Toolkit, Parental Engagement Strand.

EEF Blog: Making use of TRUST Talk

Kindred Squared, 2025. School Readiness Survey. [online] Available at: [https://kindredsquared.org.uk/…] [Accessed Jan 2025].

The TRUST framework was adapted from​‘High Quality Interactions’ in the EEF’s guidance report Preparing for Literacy [p.9] Education Endowment Foundation (EEF), 2018. Preparing for Literacy. [online] Available at: https://educationendowmentfoun… [Accessed Jan 2025].