Building Bridges Between Home and School Library : What's New - Newest Additions To Our Handpicked Articles and Teacher Resources

16 New Links:

Communication Between Teachers And Parents Research Center: Parent Involvement - by Education Week
Some basic research findings that suggest that parental involvement in the education of their children drops as kids get older, but the good news is that schools -- middle schools can take steps to couunter act the trend. new (Views So Far 56 )

Innovative Ideas On Home and And School Cooperation An Innovative Model for Parent-Teacher Partnerships | U.S. Department of Education - by Maria C. Paredes
Maria Paredes, the Director of Community Education at Creighton School District in Arizona, has developed a new model for parent engagement that is attracting national attention and resulting in positive outcomes in her district. The model, called the Academic Parent Teacher Team (APTT), replaces the traditional parent-teacher conference with three group meetings throughout the year, where teachers meet at once with all parents in their classroom. Each parent is provided with a folder of their child's performance indicators. Teachers then provide an in-depth coaching session on how to interpret this data based on overall classroom performance, school benchmarks, and state standards. Paredes began the model as a pilot with 12 participating teachers. Today, 79 classrooms in all nine schools in the Creighton district use the model. Parent attendance for APTT meetings averages 92 percent. The Department interviewed Paredes to find out more about how APTT can be used as part of a school turnaround strategy. new pop (Views So Far 120 )

Parent Partnership Solutions - Issues and Innovation In Parent-Teacher Involvement - by Cindy Long
Great read. Although research has definitively proven that parents' involvement in their children's schools raises student achievement, most educators would agree that the process of getting parents fully engaged in school is no walk in the park. Unless they teach at Captain James E. Daly Elementary School in Germantown, Maryland, that is. Twice a year, Daly's teachers, staff, and administrators hold a "Walk in the Park" at nearby Middlebrook Mobile Home Park, where more than 60 percent of the school's Hispanic students live. It's a way to say hello to familiar faces, and to break the ice with new families and those who've been reluctant to visit the school, which is about a mile away new (Views So Far 92 )

Home Visits Yield Hope and Cooperation - Schools Go Where The Action Is - by John Rosales
Great look at schools that don't wait for parents to approach them, but reach out to them where the live -- at home. new (Views So Far 79 )

Changing Parent-Teacher Dynamic Through Home Visits - by PSC
Another article, this time short but containing links to others, on how some schools are using home visits as a means to improve communication between home and school. new (Views So Far 53 )

Family-School-Community Engagement: A Path in the Forest - by Staci Maiers
What do night walks, tree houses and suspension bridges have to do with family-school-community partnerships? They're all part of the unconventional outdoor education methods focused on cultivating the relationships required to sustain school reform. IslandWood, a Bainbridge Island-based educational charity known better as a "school in the woods," played host to nearly 40 teachers, education support professionals, parents, principals and others for a three-day meeting designed to develop skills and provide strategies for school-based community liaisons and partners. "Parent engagement, especially at the middle school level, has to be seen as something more than coming to a conference or being seen in the school," said Gloria Henderson, an assistant principal at Totem Middle School in Marysville, Wash. "We have to look at it differently." new (Views So Far 35 )

Solving the Parent Involvement Puzzle - by Cindy Long
Anne T. Henderson is a Senior Consultant with the Annenberg Institute for School Reform and based in Washington D.C., where her specialty is the relationship between families and schools. She tracks both research and effective practice on how engaging families contributes to student achievement. She has also written many articles and books on the topic, including Beyond the Bake Sale: The Essential Guide to Family/School Partnerships and A New Wave of Evidence: The Impact of School, Family, and Community Connections on Student Achievement. Anne Henderson is currently serving as a consultant to a project of NEA's Priority Schools Campaign that highlights initiatives to engage families and community that our affiliates and members are partnering in. The upcoming report, Best Practices in Family-School-Community Partnerships is due out this Fall. Below is an interview with Henderson on how educators can bring more families into our public schools. new (Views So Far 78 )

Parent Guides - Making Parent Teacher Teacher Conferences Work Making the Most of Parent Teacher Meetings For Parents - by na
Parent teacher meetings? Daunting for parents, sometimes challenging. Here are some tips to have a productive conference with your child's teacher. Special note: Questions to remember to ask the teacher. There's also a free planner you can download to help you out. new (Views So Far 82 )

Parent Teacher Meetings - Simple Things Make It Work For Parents - by Qualifax
Isn't it true that sometimes the simple things make such a huge difference? In this article the tips are simple and aimed at helping parents make effective use of school contacts, but a good reminder because they are important. new (Views So Far 73 )

How to Make Parents Feel Comfortable During a Parent or Teacher Conference - by Wikihow
Basic tips for teachers intended to make parents feel more comfortable, something we forget. Parents don't always come with high trust levels or comfort, often due to their past experiences at schools when they were children. new (Views So Far 80 )

Teacher Guides - Parent - Teacher Meetings Rethinking Parent-Teacher Conferences Discussion - by NYT
This NYT article is actually a stepping off point to discuss whether we need to think differently about parent teacher conferences. Interesting debates on frequency, philosophy here. new (Views So Far 65 )

Eliminating High School Parent-Teacher Conferences - by Kathryn B. Groth
Frederick County schools decided to eliminate their regularly scheduled conferences with parents under the philosophy that teachers and parents should be communicating as needed, rather than on a scheduled basis. Startling statistic, only 18 percent of scheduled slots were used by parents, suggesting parents didn't want the meetings. new pop (Views So Far 140 )

Effective Parent-Teacher Meetings - Not About Who Is RIght - by Steve Francis
Short article with tips on how teachers can manage parent-teacher meetings, but here's the IMPORTANT POINT: Avoid meetings becoming a 'point scoring' event. The meetings are NOT about who is right and who is wrong. They are about building a partnership to assist the student. Give some thought to how parents of this particular student could assist them at home. new (Views So Far 68 )

temp You Don't Want Me at the Parent-Teacher Conference - Tongue In Cheek Commentary By A Parent-Comedian? - by Sandra Tsing Loh
Part of an ongoing debate on parent teacher conferences, you decide how serious the commentary is, but the gold is in reading the comments, which illustrates the split between parent and teacher perceptions. new (Views So Far 23 )

Are Parent-Teacher Conferences Outdated? - by MICHELLE HORTON
In Amy Wilson's piece, "In Pre-K, No News Is Good News," she makes the argument that parent-teacher meetings -- especially in preschool -- should be more on a need-to-meet basis. "I'm not saying preschool conferences are counterproductive; any parent who has that 20 minutes to spare is happy to hear how adorable her child is, or to peruse a selection of that child's scribblings. Nor am I suggesting discussing preschoolers' progress with their teachers can never be useful. At our middle child's pre-kindergarten conference, his teacher surprised us both with stories of our son's frustration and unhappiness in the classroom. That honest talk led to our holding him back, a decision we feel great about today. But even in that case, I was left frustrated that we had to wait until an arbitrary date nine weeks into the school year to hear that our child was having such difficulty." new (Views So Far 81 )

Download Depot of Free Teaching Materials - by Teaching Today
Free teaching resources that can be downloaded by category, including: Career Development Classroom Management High Stakes Testing Instruction and Planning Integrating Technology in the Classroom Parental Involvement Portfolios Reading Skills Writing Skills new (Views So Far 74 )