Parents have a crucial role in their child’s education, and their involvement is key to students’ academic success. This lesson provides teachers with strategies for helping parents know how to support their child’s learning at home.
Activities
Homework
1) Help parents create homework routines at home, encouraging them to focus on location, space, time and schedule. Four activities to help promote these ideas can be found under “suggested procedures” in Module 3, Lesson 2 – Ways to Engage Families at Home: Creating an environment for learning at home.
2) Give parents specific suggestions for working with children at home, such as:
- reading for 15 minutes most nights
- doing about 5 math problems each night
- saying to their children “Let’s go over this together.”
These suggestions have shown to be beneficial in increasing parental knowledge and efficacy in promoting their children’s school learning (Hoover et al., 1995)
(Module 3, Lesson 3 – Ways to Engage Families at Home: Creating an environment for learning at home)
3) Provide parents with these 8 strategies to help their children finish their homework.
https://www.teachervision.com/help-parents-deal-homework
(Module 2, Lesson 3 – Strategies to Improve Communication with Families: Open House)
4) As parents help their children with their homework, suggest that they:
- ask him/her to explain how she/she arrived at his/her answer
- ask him/her to make predictions in stories as they read together, as this strengthens reading comprehension (#14 in the following resource)
https://www.edutopia.org/blog/20-tips-developing-positive-relationships-parents-elena-aguilar
(Module 2, Lesson 3 – Strategies to Improve Communication with Families: How Positive is My Communication with Families?)
5) Encourage parents to provide a space at home where children can do their homework.
http://www.colorincolorado.org/article/encouraging-and-sustaining-ell-parent-engagement
(Module 2, Lesson 5 – Ways to Familiarize Families with the School System: Learn About Others Strategies to Help Families Gain a Better Understanding of the School System)
Supporting academic skills at home
1) This resource provides 9 specific strategies parents can use to help their young children learn about and practice writing.
https://www.naeyc.org/our-work/families/support-writing-home
(Module 3, Lesson 3 – Ways to Engage Families at Home: More Homework Support)
2) This resource provides 6 specific strategies parents can use to help enrich their interactions with their young children.
https://www.naeyc.org/our-work/families/listen-talk-answer-support-learning
(Module 3, Lesson 3 – Ways to Engage Families at Home: More Homework Support)
3) Provide parents with this list of 10 strategies to help their K-5 children be successful in completing their homework and understanding their assignments.
(Module 3, Lesson 3 – Ways to Engage Families at Home: More Homework Support)
4) Print out and photocopy printable mini-books to your students’ levels and interests. Explain to parents that reading mini-books with their child can help improve their child’s reading fluency. (Module 3, Lesson 3 – Ways to Engage Families at Home: Mini-books for fluency)
- Printable mini-books can be found at this resource: https://teachables.scholastic.com/teachables/mini-books.html (Module 3, Lesson 3 – Ways to Engage Families at Home: Mini-books for fluency) *You must be a subscribing member to download and print these resources
- Printable mini-books can be found at this resource: https://www.enchantedlearning.com/books/mini/(Module 3, Lesson 3 – Ways to Engage Families at Home: Mini-books for fluency)
- Encourage parents to use these reader materials that are provided in 9 different languages found in the Pacific region: http://www.prel.org/earlyreaders/index.html
5) Start an at-home time-reading program at home by following the “suggested procedures” in Module 3, Lesson 3 – Ways to Engage Families at Home: Timed readings.
6) Encourage parents to listen to audio books with their children at home. LibriVox inclues a collection of free audio books at
(Module 3, Lesson 3 – Ways to Engage Families at Home: Audio books)
7) Promote writing at home through introducing Flat Stanley to your class. Follow the “suggested procedures” in Module 3, Lesson 3 – Ways to Engage Families at Home: Promoting Writing at Home. You can use the following resource to help get the Flat Stanley Project started in your classroom.
http://www.flatstanleyproject.com
8) Promote parental involvement at home by providing activities related to school curriculum and suggesting opportunities parents can use to discuss math at home. Ideas can be found under “suggested procedures” in Module 3, Lesson 3 – Ways to Engage Families at Home: Promoting Math at Home.
- Provide parents with this booklet with mathematic activities they can complete with their preschool- 5thgrade children. https://www2.ed.gov/parents/academic/help/math/math.pdf (Module 3, Lesson 3 – Ways to Engage Families at Home: Promoting math at home)
9) Incorporate dual language books into your language arts curriculum by following the “suggested procedures” in Module 3, Lesson 3 – Ways to Engage Families at Home: Dual language books. View “resources” to see seven suggested websites that offer dual language books.
At-home literacy program
1) Start an at-home literacy program to help improve your students’ reading skills by following the “suggested procedures” found on Module 3, Lesson 3 – Ways to Engage Families at Home: Decodable and Phonic Readers. Make sure to send home a letter to parents explaining what the program is and how they can be involved.
- A template for a letter to send home to parents can be found here:
- Printable decodable and phonic readers can be found at this resource: https://teachables.scholastic.com/teachables/search-results.html?search=1&text=Printable%20Decodable%20and%20Phonic%20Readers&prefilter=&filters=&selected=%5B%5D (Module 3, Lesson 3 – Ways to Engage Families at Home: Decodable and Phonic Readers) *You must be a subscribing member to download and print these resources
- Printable decodable and phonic readers can be found at this resource: http://eps.schoolspecialty.com/products/literacy/readers/spire-decodable-readers/about-the-program(Module 3, Lesson 3 – Ways to Engage Families at Home: Decodable and Phonic Readers)
- Provide parents with this resource that suggested 4 quick and easy phonics activities they can do with their children. https://www.scholastic.com/parents/books-and-reading/reading-resources/developing-reading-skills/building-phonics-skills.html(Module 3, Lesson 3 – Ways to Engage Families at Home: Decodable and Phonic Readers)
Increasing parents' understanding of child development
1) This page provides information about children’s developmental stages for grades 1-12. Each section includes a handout for parents of their child’s expected developmental milestones that may be helpful to distribute at conferences and/or open houses.
https://www.teachervision.com/grades-stages-development
(Module 2, Lesson 3 – Strategies to Improve Communication with Families: Open House)