Description of Family Story Backpacks

• Transportable curriculum to facilitate the sharing of stories around themes significant to families. Children check out the backpacks on a rotating basis for one week to share with their families at home.
• Each backpack contains 3 books (1 nonfiction and 2 fiction books), 1 related artifact, and a family story journal. The purpose of the artifact is to encourage the family to share oral stories around the theme.
• Each backpack has a journal for that theme. Each family adds an entry and reads past entries from other families.
• Entries in journals can be a family story related to the theme, responses to the books, or descriptions of what the family did with the backpack. Any member of the family can add to the journal and the entries can be drawings, writing, photos, etc. Families can make multiple entries related to each backpack.
• Short interviews are conducted with children as they return the backpacks about their family’s interactions around the backpack.

Criteria for selecting themes:

• Broad themes that connect to shared experiences in families or memories across generations.
• Relevant to young children’s lives in families
• Relevant to the community

Criteria for selecting books:

• 1 concept book: usually also global literature, representing how people in different cultures or cultural communities engage with the theme of the backpack. This concept book also provides for a wide range of connections for families and introduces them to difference within a common experience.
• 2 picture story books: each from a different culture or cultural community.

ο Multiple perspectives: Stories that represent a variety of ways in which people live and experience the theme. Example: different ways in which families, children and/or the community play or prepare to go to bed.
ο The two stories connect to the interests and potential connections of the local community.

• Bilingual/Wordless books: Each backpack contains either a bilingual book or a wordless book to support families in sharing literature and stories in different languages.
• Balance: Between male and female as main characters.
• Sharing literature: Books can be shared in different ways. Families can read aloud and/or story about the book.
• Engagement: Books and artifacts that have strong potential to engage children based on teacher knowledge and previous experiences using books with young children.

Criteria for selecting artifacts:

• Encourage storying (sharing and listening to stories) through play.

ο Example: the backpack about Play includes a plastic ball and board games because it is appropriate to the theme and families can share stories while playing.
ο Example: photo album to which families are invited to add their own photos/drawings of their grandparents.

• Based on themes across the books, or mentioned in the text or represented in the illustrations of the book(s).

ο Example: Birthday candles inside the backpacks about birthdays.

• Closely connected to the theme of the backpack, but not necessarily mentioned in the books

ο Example: a little plastic umbrella as part of the backpack about rain.
ο Example: ABC wooden blocks as part of the backpack about names

Download This Page

Backpack Decision Graphic Flowchart

María Acevedo, Dorea Kleker, Kathy Short, 2012

1. Which backpacks would be of most interest to you and your families?

• Time for Bed
• Let’s Play
• Celebrating Birthdays
• Grandparents are the Best
• Families Have Many Cultures
• Rainy Days
• Together as a Family
• The Story of My Name
• School Days

2. How do you want to introduce the backpacks to your families?

• Letter home to introduce the backpacks
• Back-to-school curriculum night
• Could send home a survey about the backpacks if have concerns about participation or about families for whom a particular theme might be problematic.

3. What type of rotation system would work best for your classroom and families?

• When will you send the backpacks home? What day of the week works best for sending the backpacks home and bringing them back?
  • Send home on a day that is already established for communications from school
  • Send home so that parents have both weekdays and the weekend to engage with the backpack
  • What type of communication needs to go home so family knows the backpack is coming?
    • Note or email to let the family know that the backpack will be coming home the next day or week.
    • Note in the backpack to let family know what to do and when to send the backpack back to school
    • Family story journals have a description of the types of entries that can be made in the journal. Is this sufficient for your families?
    • Are there other languages that this information needs to be translated into?
  • Does anything need to be added to your backpacks in terms of crayons, markers, or pen for writing/drawing in the journals?
  • Add additional tags or identifiers with the name of the school and/or teacher

4. What type of management system is needed at school to determine the rotation of who is taking the backpacks home each week?

• May want to begin with 1-2 backpacks and the children whose families are most likely to engage with the backpacks to establish the routine.
• May want to send home 3-4 backpacks each week rather than all 6 so that there are always a couple of backpacks in case of children who don’t bring them back on time and to make the exchange easier to manage.
• Find a system that is easy to manage and fits with other organizational systems already in place in the classroom
• Class chart or record of who has a particular backpack and when it is checked out and returned as well as whether anything is missing.

5. How will children share about the family’s interactions around the backpack?

• Short conversation between child and teacher when child returns backpack
• Short conversation with a parent/guardian when they drop the child off at school
• Child shares with the class on the “sharing chair” or morning meeting
• Small group lesson with the children who had the backpacks to have them share with each other. Could dictate a “story” about their experiences on large chart paper or in a class book.
• Closing circle at the end of the day where child who had backpack shares and then passes it on to the next child who is taking it home
• Possible questions include: What did your family do with the backpack? What was your favorite book? Why? What did you do with the books in your family? With the objects? What did you draw/write in the journal? Who helped you?

6. What kind of recording system would work well and be easy to maintain to keep track of children’s sharing on the backpacks?

• Index card for each child to jot down quick comments on their experiences
• Chart for recording quick comments on each child
• Big book or class chart where to record children’s comments on their experiences

7. What do you want to do with the entries in the family story journals?

• Class book of the entries for children to look through and share in the classroom
• Create a bound book for each child with the entries from their family

Home Visit as a Tool for Family and Community Knowledge

Early childhood home visiting has been shown to be an effective service model and a tool to learn from all young children and their families. Through the undergraduate CREATE (Communities are Resources in Early childhood Teacher Education) program teacher candidates experience home visits as a way to learn and become familiar with local communities and children’s learning experiences at home.

As part of this academic experience teacher candidates are expected to do a couple of home visits for each semester during fall and spring semesters. We work together with current classroom teachers (in-service) to identify 1-2 families with a preschool age child that might be willing to be part of this educational learning experience. These home visits are scheduled always at family’s convenience and as token of appreciation they will receive an educational gift. During these visits teacher candidates observe a child in order to describe the child’s learning during classroom time (e.g., circle time, story reading) and during after school at home (e.g., afternoon routine at home playing or doing literacy activities) to learn about the families funds of knowledge and families histories. Furthermore, teacher candidates We help prepare and support teacher candidates for this experience and support through the process by helping them brainstorm about possible scenarios and guiding them to ask questions that will allow them to learn about the child’s early literacy experiences and particular knowledge acquired at home.

In addition to home visits, student learn to participate in community literacy events organized with families and children through our CREATE Community and Family Liaison together with participating early childhood programs. Please see our community literacy events and project link.