Article Parental involvement in language and literacy acquisition: A bilingual journaling approach CHILD LANGUAGE TEACHING & THERAPY Child Language Teaching and Therapy 2014, Vol. 30(3) 317-336 The Author(s) 2013 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0265659013513028 clt.sagepub.com SSAGE Lena G Caesar Loyola University in Maryland, USA Nickola Wolf Nelson Western Michigan University, USA Abstract This pilot study examined the feasibility of a home-school partnership for improving emergent literacy skills in Spanish-speaking pre-school children of migrant farmworkers. Parents were requested to send labeled drawings of family activities to their children's classroom for supplementing bilingual language and literacy instruction. Participants were 19 children (between 2;6 and 5;2) assigned randomly to experimental (n = 11) or control (n = 8) classrooms. Pretest- posttest measures in Spanish and English were obtained using the Early Literacy Skills Assessment (ELSA). Results indicated significant increases in pre- to posttest English and Spanish scores for the experimental group, but not for the control group in alphabetic and print knowledge. Parental participation rates (as measured by weekly drawing submissions) exceeded 90%. These results suggest that integrating parent-generated content into classroom language intervention activities may be feasible both in terms of parental involvement as well as children's emergent literacy skills development. Keywords Drawing, ELL, emergent literacy, language, migrant, preschool, Spanish Introduction The improvement of literacy outcomes among language minority students is a priority for educa- tors, clinicians, and lawmakers. Research indicates that Spanish-speaking English language learn- ers (ELLs) are twice as likely as their monolingual English-speaking peers to demonstrate sub-average literacy skills (Snow et al., 1998). The National Center for Educational Statistics has Corresponding author: Lena G Caesar, Loyola University in Maryland, 4501 Charles Street, Baltimore, MD 21210, USA. Email: Igcaesar@loyola.edu