Introduction

There's a Writer in Our House! contains three parts: Part 1, The Emerging Writer; Part 2, The Emerging Reader; and Part 3, Meeting Today's Challenges for Parents. The Introduction presents an invitation to parents of children in the first through fifth grades (and beyond, in some cases) to become Informed Guides as their children engage in the first steps of three critical literacy areas: writing, reading, and critical thinking. This opening section introduces an approach for engaging children's individual strengths and interests by showing parents how literacy activities can be customized and personalized using the At-Home Model, which serves as a foundation for all subsequent sections of the book. From the beginning, the important role of writing in a child's overall development is particularly emphasized, set in the context of the special opportunities of the home environment. This in turn sets the stage for Part 2 in which we emphasize the benefits to child development when children become readers. Parents are given tips on how to get the most benefit from reading this book, in the form of Easy Access Notes: What You Will Learn, which appear at the beginning of each chapter, along with information about the downloads available from the publisher's website. The Introduction also references the wider audience for this book: classroom and special education teachers, educational therapists and learning specialists, home-schooling families, and teachers in adult literacy programs.