This article focuses on the daily written replies of four casestudy families to their five to seven year-olds’ messages, about school activities, in Family Message Journals. Analysis of the instructional functions realized through text structure and lexicogrammatical features of families’ replies reveals how family members may have played a role in providing writing instruction. Results demonstrate that all families, regardless of sociocultural background, had the ability to skillfully scaffold learning to write through instructional feedback on children’s messages and modeling of genre conventions. In particular, the one immigrant family of English Language Learners modeled powerful writing that sometimes pushed the boundaries of mainstream genre expectations. Results demonstrate that even families typically considered less capable of participating, have much to contribute to children’s school literacy learning that may both extend classroom instruction and introduce alternative, hybrid text models. These alternative texts complicate issues of genre modeling and family involvement and suggest the need for educators to recognize the value of multiple forms of social communication beyond mainstream expectations.
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