The two most important goals are to encourage parents to read with their children, and, as their children get older, to nurture a habit of reading. If you feel you can make only a small number of asks of parents, these are the two that you should prioritise.
Alongside that, it is important to support parents to have high expectations for what their children can achieve - and how simply they can help them to be the best learners. Here you can find a ready document that sets out the evidence-based ways (not specific to literacy) in which parents can support their child's learning at home. This may be something that will be useful to share with parents, for example as a handout or part of a newsletter, or to use as the basis for a presentation to parents. And for more details on Strategies for Principals and teachers to help parents support learning at home, click here.
We have also prepared some suggested workshop packs that you can use to run literacy workshops with parents. They include presentations, and suggested workshop materials, that you should feel free to use and modify. Two workshops we recommend the most are on how to nurture the reading habit and build a love of reading or, on another day, what activities can parents do to support their child’s literacy learning including activities like how to most effectively read to/with their child or how to do shared reading. Activities embedded within these workshop packs are identified per suitable grade level/s.
You can also read about the experience of Al-Sahl Primary School, which has successfully offered, through varied approaches, practical strategies to parents to support their child literacy learning.