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Findings of the Haringey Shared Reading Project*

Seven major findings were reported by the researchers:

1. It was found to be both feasible and practicable to involve nearly all parents in educational activities such as listening to their children read, even when parents were nonliterate and largely non-English speaking.
2. Children who read to their parents made significantly greater progress in reading than those who did not engage in this type of literacy sharing.
3. Most parents expressed great satisfaction at being involved in this way by the schools; teachers reported that the children showed an increased interest in school learning and were better behaved.
4. Teachers involved in the home collaboration reported that they found the work with parents worthwhile, and they continued to involve parents with subsequent classes after the experiment was concluded. Teachers of the control classes also adopted the home collaboration program after the two-year experimental period.
5. The collaboration between teachers and parents was effective for children of all initial levels of performance, including those who, at the beginning of the study, were failing to learn to read.
6. Small-group instruction in reading, given by a highly competent specialist teacher, did not produce improvements in attainment comparable in magnitude to those obtained from the collaboration with parents. In contrast to the home collaboration program, benefits of extra reading instruction were least apparent for initially low achieving children.
7. Lack of literacy or English fluency did not detract from parents' willingness to collaborate with the school in listening to their children read English books, nor did it prevent improvement in these children's gains in literacy achievement.

*These findings were summarized from a 1982 article by J. Tizard, W. N. Schofield, and Jenny Hewison: "Collaboration between Teachers and Parents in Assisting Children's Reading,"British Journal of Educational Psychology, 52(1), 1-15.