Page 82: Engaging with parents - parents evening and parental workshops
As mentioned in my previous post: Page 81: Engaging with parents, parental engagement and involvement is very important. Parents play a critical and important role in their child's education and educational development. As teachers, we should be providing parents with the tools and support they need to help their children at home. If you have not read last weeks post, I would flick back before conducting todays read, where I will be sharing how I support and work alongside parents through conducting parent workshops and successfully planned and implemented parents evening sessions.
Parent workshops:
Throughout the year, running parent workshops is a great way of informing parents about what we are learning and sharing methods to support learning at home. To supplement this, in my classroom, I have created a parents 'What we are learning ...' display in our cloakroom which is updated regularly. When parents drop their children off, they are able to see key vocabulary, pictures and information about what we are learning so they can support at home. Back to the workshops, running a reading, writing and mathematics workshops throughout the year allows us to share with parents some of the key areas and methods in our teaching throughout the year. We do also record these so parents who cannot make the session are still able to attend. Here are some ideas I have done to support my parents:
- I invited parents in to watch me teach a phonics lesson. They sat with their child and I narrated my pedagogical decisions aloud to support parents in understadning what we are teaching and more importantly why are we teaching it and specifically in that way.
- Filmed a video of myself with a small group of children, sharing our process and 'script' to 1-1 count. Parents were then able to have a go with their child and I could go around supporting the correct use of language and order and steps.
- Shared games and learning opportunties from home. Learning is and can be everywhere! It is just about finding and knowing the opportunties. I showed parents where to find learning such as counting tins in a cupboard or fruit in the fruit bowl, to imaginative play with a simple spotty vs stripy sock puppet. Sharing tools such as making instruments with rice and a milk bottle etc, it is about highlighting those opportunties.
Parents evening:
This varies from school to school, in my case, we have two parents evening a year (in term 1 and term 2) followed by reports in term 3. Parents evenings are sparse and spread far between. I will just note the obvious but these aren't your only opportunties to speak to speak to parents. No 'new' or 'shock' information is to be shared here, parents evening is about extending conversations and discussing successes and next steps in more detail that you don't always have the length of time to before to after school. Whilst still on this note, do not wait until parents evening if a discussion is needed. Arrange to meet with parents, invite them in for conversations and work together continually throughout the year.
When it gets to the actual evening, here are some tips from my experience and critical reflections:
- To start, I begin with a general overview. How is the child in class? What do they bring to the class? Personality, attitude, conduct towards school rules and routines.
- Next, I move onto talking about the subject areas.
(a) Start with a success. I like to begin by celebrating what the pupils are doing well. I always ensure to have at least one piece of physical work to showcase and share with the parents. I also suggest ways that parents can support their child at home to extend the learning.
(b) Beginning to discuss and introduce some next steps. Parents evening is a postive night but in a helpful and constructive way, it is also important to share with parents any areas the children might be struggling and what can be done to support this. From setting homework, sign posting websites and showing parents methods. For example I showed a parent our 1-1 counting script and how we use this is school so a consistent approach can be put in place at home.
- Finally, I finish with questions. I allow the parents a chance to ask any questions they may have and I respond accordingly.
Thank you for joining me for part 2 of developing engagement strategies with parents. To a teacher I hope these can be useful in your practice and to a parent never be afraid to ask! We wanted to support you and your learner and no ask is too much, let your teacher know what you need and without knowing your queries we aren't able to put the support in place that we can and want to do.
- Miss Yeoman
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