Hand in hand, from A to Z!

In 1995, the Commission scolaire Marie-Victorin, in partnership with various organizations, set up a joint action-research project on the prevention of illiteracy in a working-class area of Longueuil. The project is intended for families with children up to 4 years of age. Its goal is to support working-class families in their efforts to foster the overall development of their children and their emergent literacy skills.

The project involves five areas of research:

• emergent reading and writing
• early family intervention
• the ecological approach
• primary prevention
• partnership

Since the beginning of the project, the team of partners has developed and experimented with various tools and approaches to help families and their children through preventive and long-term action in the area of emergent literacy. The Hand in Hand emergent literacy materials, which include eight documents and five posters, represent the culmination of all the work that went into this project.