Students spend 87 percent of their waking time outside school under the guidance of their parents. Before and during the school years, youngsters can benefit greatly from constructive language experiences at home. Parents’ stimulation of their children can improve their vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, and a general knowledge of the world. Parents can express affection, provide emotional stability, and encourage children’s academic work and related activities. Parents can help their children gain a key to accomplished adulthood by deferring immediate gratifications to invest in the accomplishments that lead to long-term academic and other life goals.
Research indicates that a student's home environment, or atmosphere, accounts for 10.89% of the variations in student achievement.1 However, this effective intervention and resource is under-utilized, despite its value in helping schools to improve teaching and student learning. Based on an individual student's needs, teachers, administrators, support staff, school-based intervention teams, and/or IEPs interventions with the parents can address parental:
1. Interest in schoolwork and how to communicate this interest to their child, including:
a. Discussing school work frequently and systematically;
b. Encouraging effort and accomplishments regarding school work; and
c. Providing resources for schoolwork
2. Supervision of their child's outside of school activities to optimize academic achievement including monitoring:
a. The time spent doing homework;
b. After school activities; and
c. Television viewing and/or computer time.
3. Styles and techniques for communicating expectations. High parental expectations for student achievement and student's perceptions of high parental expectations are associated with improved student achievement.
A strong home-school collaboration greatly enhances the prospects that any intervention will be effective. Parent involvement may include:
a. Providing information to and gathering information from families about their child's academic progress.
b. Sharing strategies that have proven successful in improving academics and gathering information from families about strategies that have worked at home.
c. Helping families identify their concerns and locate resources to assist them. For example, the US Department of Education, as well as the Reading Rockets Organization, have also published a number of resources, which can help parents address academic concerns. In the attached publications, parents are provided with guidance on helping their children address an array of academic difficulties:
d. Contacting parents periodically by phone or postcard, focusing on students' successes and upcoming activities for students and families.
A simple strategy for facilitating teacher-home communication and improving student academic achievement involves the use of school-home contingency notes. The basic components of a school-home notes procedure involve a teacher periodically sending home a brief written report on a child's academic performance and a parent reviewing the report, delivering the prescribed consequences to the child, signing the report, and sending it back to the teacher. The parent may also send a brief written report to the teacher on the child's academic activities and/or behavior at home, as well as any home events that may affect the student's behavior at school (for example, missing the bus; going to sleep late/not getting enough sleep; having an asthma attack; etc.) School-home notes have been described as "one of the most effective techniques for improving a student's motivation and classroom behavior. It is also one of the most mismanaged and under-utilized techniques."
Based on the intervention, an array of monitoring and feedback forms can be sent home regularly with a note like the following to keep parent (s) informed of the student’s progress.
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Parental Notice of Student’s Progress in Addressing Academic Concerns |
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Date:
Dear: (parent’s name)
Your child (student's name) had a good week, as the included sheet indicates. The goal (s) for academics was met. It would be appropriate for you to do something special for your child to reinforce this good work.
Sincerely,
Classroom teacher |
In addition, activities and corresponding statements like the following can be included in the school-based intervention plan &/or IEP:
1. Utilize daily school-home contingency notes - brief written report on a child's academic performance and a parent reviewing the report, delivering the prescribed consequences to the child, signing the report, and sending it back to the teacher.
2. " Parent will attend weekly parent training sessions to learn more effective ways of: demonstrating an interest in schoolwork; supervising outside of school activities to optimize achievement; and communicating high expectations.
3. “The parent will send a brief written report to the teacher on the child's behavior at home, as well as any home events that may affect the student's behavior at school.”
4. “Teacher will provide information to families about their child's academic progress.”
5. “Sharing strategies that have proven successful in improving academic progress and gathering information from families about strategies that have worked at home.”
6. “Case manager will help families identify their concerns and locate resources to assist them”.
7. “Teacher will contact parents periodically by phone or postcard, focusing on students' successes and upcoming activities for students and families.”
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Footnotes |
| 1. Marzano, R. J. (2003) What Works in Schools – Translating Research into Action Alexandria, Virginia, Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (p. 128) |