We all know that it takes a partnership between home and school to foster the kind of connections and growth we strive for as educators. When you have those kinds of quality relationships, it opens the door for parents to support the academic standards as well as the socioemotional ones.
I meet with a group of parents each month and have for the past 2 1/2 years. This group serves as my parent focus group, ones who are willing to sit down and have face to face conversations with me. This has led to several academic conversations that give me an insight into what my parents are thinking, as well as engage in some thoughts I have or decisions that we’ve made as a campus.
One that has come up over and over again is the idea of homework. Knowing that I scheduled it as a “think tank” conversation this month. I’ve written recently about avoiding those education extremes, homework included, and wanted to share specific things that parents could do at home to support ALL students and their academic growth. I wanted something that they could use with our kinder Wolves to my 4th-grade Wolves.
Knowing how incredibly valuable time is, I wanted to focus on skills that would transcend any specific content area and would fit naturally with a parent just living life with their student. Knowing that if it’s easy and meaningful, it would have a greater chance of sticking. We’ve also spent a considerable amount of time in our PLC’s talking through ways we could engage our families with our guided reading initiative and I wanted to offer a way parents could do more with reading, than just, well…reading…so the backside has questions that any parent could ask to help push students past just working on fluency and go deeper with their comprehension.
The end result was this, a Homework Helper. It was well received by my parent focus group and I thought maybe you could use it as well!
Bonus! I crowdsourced and solicited ideas in ways to help build a stronger connection from school to home with literacy, and this padlet was born. Let me know if you use any of these ideas, or feel free to add some of your own!
Partnership helpN,
Amber
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