Top Tips for Teachers on Engaging Parents in Learning

From having parents come in to speak about their jobs to sending postcards home, education experts share advice on parental engagement

 Parents sometimes need advice on how to support children with their homework. Photograph: Alamy

Schools take a variety of creative approaches to involve parents in their child’s learning, from parent-student cooking classes to sending tweets about lesson activities.

We recently ran a live chat for teachers, heads, academics and parents to share their ideas on how to break down barriers, reach those who were reluctant to engage and ensure parents and carers feel that their voices are heard. Here’s a roundup of their suggestions: 

Make sure parents feel listened to

Schools must take the lead and be as flexible as possible. For me that should include, where necessary, a block of time during the school term where teachers and parents are brought together. Having two opportunities a year for parents to sit with a teacher for 45 minutes has been very well received at my school. It’s time for a real and focused conversation about the child, with both sides listening. Yes, teachers listening too. Parents now say they are feeling listened to, and all the technology in the world cannot replace this. It’s a big job for schools to make this work logistically, but it’s so valuable.

• Simon Feasey, headteacher at Bader primary school

The simple things work best

One nice thing the secondary teachers [at my son’s school] do is send a stamped postcard home when my son does a good piece of homework. I may be a techie, but I actually quite like that old-fashioned touch, and it goes up on the kitchen noticeboard and becomes a talking point.

• Tes Macpherson is a tech entrepreneur who set up the parent communication platform PTAsocial

Give feedback

I’ve been in more than one school where staff have said how many helpful ideas parents had given them, while parents said that staff never listened. School staff were listening, but they weren’t closing the feedback loop and letting parents know that their ideas had been taken on board.

• Janet Goodall, a lecturer with particular expertise in parental engagement at theUniversity of Bath

Help parents to support homework

I’ve found through focus group interviews with parents that most are keen to support their child’s learning, but they seek comfort in doing so. Methods in maths is a common talking point. A simple video modelling an approach created by the class teacher or a pupil and uploaded on to the learning platform (with parents given access) can secure engagement.

• Feasey

Be creative in where you hold events and who you invite

One thing I advocate a lot is having events away from school if at all possible. One headteacher did the beginning of the year speech for new parents not at school, but at places parents were already comfortable in. I know of schools that have done things like getting the manager of the local football team to give an address at a parents’ evening – it got a lot of dads in.

• Goodall

Use social media to start conversations

My feeling is that sites like Facebook and Twitter have done a lot to allow schools to openly broadcast the great things they are doing, but at a fairly generic level (nothing too tailored to any given parent or student). For me the next step is to use technology to enable the more meaningful-level communications, securely, and on a regular basis.

• James Whitaker is the founder and chief executive of ParentHub

Five of the best apps that help teachers communicate with parents

 

Read more

Set up blogs

We run blogs for every year group and on specific areas (such as visible learning), and I keep a headteacher’s blog. As well as covering the curriculum and learning activities, we blog when out and about. The year 5 ski trip and year 4 residential trip to France blogs were very well received. Parents responded regularly so there was actually a dialogue between them and the children, even though they were hundreds of miles apart.

• Feasey

Involve parents in action research

A few years ago, I did some research with parents where they chose one thing to work on with their child. For some, it was getting out of the house on time, for others it was a specific school subject. They did this for a term and then reported back. It was great talking to the parents – they felt that they’d taken control of something and dealt with it.

• Goodall

Give a peek into lessons

One school I worked with – in a community where most parents didn’t have computers at home – arranged with the local supermarket to put a computer in the foyer, with videos of classrooms on a loop. Whole families apparently came in to see what was happening. That might be something that could be adapted. I keep thinking about all the digital displays I increasingly see.

• Goodall

Invite parents in to speak

At the last school I worked at, there was a massive drive to improve children’s writing. In order to give pupils more purpose to what they were producing, we invited parents with different jobs into the school to talk about what they did, and more importantly, explain why writing was important to their role. About 40 ended up taking part, ranging from submarine engineers to scientists.

• Ben Culverhouse, a Year 5 teacher at High Down junior school in Portishead

Don’t be afraid to ask for help

I was talking to a fairly new teacher not too long ago and she’d phoned a parent and simply said, “I’m worried about [name]. You know your child far better than I, what can I do to help?” It was a bit of a breakthrough because the teacher was reversing the usual structure and asking the parent for information and knowledge.

• Goodall

Source: http://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/2015/jun/28/top-tips-for-teachers-on-engaging-parents-in-learning

Become a better teacher by getting more rest.

It’s a demanding job – do it as well as you can, but be kind to yourself, too

You’ve probably already broken the futile resolutions you made while pie-eyed, singing the new year in. But one unofficial “promise to self” still reverberates a couple of weeks on from your ugly awakening on New Year’s Day. Repeat after me: “I will be a better teacher this term. I will be a better teacher this term. Now pass the gin.”

Only it’s not as simple as just making a resolution. You can’t resolve to find the workload manageable; because it isn’t. You can’t resolve to find your mentor less objectionable; because they are. And you can’t resolve to not find your first year’s teaching an emotional rollercoaster; it just is. But you can resolve to be the best version of yourself it is possible for you to be.

So the first thing to do is take a fairly hard look at what your professional issues are and reflect on how you’ve done.

What have you been doing that is getting in the way of being a better teacher than you were last term? What is the worst thing the kids say about you? Are they right? (Clue here: they are right.) What is stopping you from being the best version of yourself that you can be, bearing in mind that you’ve been given the gift of spending your life surrounded by the developing sensibilities and passions of young people at their best?

Behaviour impact analysis

It’s worth doing what they call a “behaviour impact analysis” on yourself at this stage of your career. First, list the classroom behaviours you manifest that might be getting in the way of being a really good teacher, and write down the impact of these behaviours on the students. Then go through the process of deciding whether the impact on the students is acceptable or not.

If it is, you’re fine; if it’s not, you have to make changes to that behaviour. Write these down and implement those changes.

Having had a look at your own behaviour – because you can’t change anyone else’s unless you can model the ability to change your own – and having put yourself underneath the glare of your own critique, then resolve that, above all else, you will be kind to yourself.

The job will make all kinds of demands on you, many of them utterly unreasonable. You are doing a job in which the amount of work you have to do is obviously not possible to manage within a normal person’s waking hours. The phrase “normal person” is important here, in that normal might reasonably be thought a nomenclature for sane. In an insane environment, it is often those who display the greatest quotient of the prevailing moral of the arena who rise to the top. Consequently, some of the people handing out the expectations of you, have insane expectations of themselves and will blithely pass this illness down as a minimum professional requirement.

Teacher take care of yourself

But let’s get real here. There is no other job in which the minimum expectation seems to be that you will destroy all your human relationships, never get any rest and be in a continual state of panic. There is no other job that routinely and blithely expects you to run yourself so far past the point of exhaustion that you look back on exhaustion with overly fond eyes. So you must resolve to look after yourself.

If you are too tired to do any more work, go to bed. If there is nothing on telly, go to bed. If it is Saturday daytime, go to bed. Teaching leaves you permanently exhausted, running on emergency power all too often. It’s far worse if you haven’t had anywhere near what a normal, sane person would regard as rest worthy of the name. So, if you want to be a better teacher this term: get more rest. You can’t function properly without it.

On a related point, it is about now that you must decide whether you are going to be an early-morning grafter or an after-school drudge. The insane response to a job that it is not possible to do, is to attempt to do it by never, ever, ever stopping working. You can’t manage this lifestyle for any protracted time when you are a young teacher – it takes years of practice to be a proper workaholic – if you do try you’ll find yourself standing dribbling in a cold field, clad in your pyjamas, staring into space within a month.

A saner response is to do your level best.

This means either getting to school early (before senior management arrives) or staying after hours.

The former has an advantage over the latter. Do your marking in the morning, and you can’t give in to the temptation to bugger off home, as you’ve got to be in the building all day to teach. Yes, it is desperately wearing getting up at stupid o’clock, but when you are in work when everyone else is considering getting up, you get to feel a certain gratifying, Nietzschean moral superiority. 

Get in early. Grab a class set of books

Furthermore, if you can take the imaginative leap required to understand the statement that marking is actually the best planning you can do, then if you get in early, you can do the two things simultaneously. Get in early. Grab a class set of books. Go to town on them. Note down anything you notice that your class can’t do. Your lesson plan is now in front of you.

Finally, understand why everyone is telling you not to take things personally. It’s not for the reason you think: it’s not because the children are attacking the uniform and not the person. They are attacking the person. The reason you are told not to take things personally is that you are a trained graduate professional. Taking things personally is not a professional response. Wise up.

Source: http://newteachers.tes.co.uk/content/become-better-teacher-getting-more-rest

Know Where You Are in the Pecking Order

The staff hierarchy in schools can be confusing for newcomers. But as Gerald Haigh explains, there are some subtle shades of seniority and points of protocol that NQTs would do well to bear in mind.

1 Be clear about who is in charge of you in your various roles. If you’re a form tutor, your ‘boss’ for that area might be the head of year. But if you’re also a subject teacher, you will report to the head of that subject. So make sure you know who is supposed to run what.

2 Listen to your leaders. Yes, you’re bursting with much better ideas and you can’t wait to interrupt, but contain yourself. When the moment comes, ask the right questions and show that you understand what’s going on and what the issues are.

3 Don’t skip stages in the hierarchy. The next person up from your subject leader may be a faculty head or a deputy. You may hate the subject head and love the deputy, but you shouldn’t leapfrog to the deputy to try to alter a decision or settle differences. The deputy will most probably support your immediate manager and your stock might go down.

4 The above point does not mean that you can’t recruit the top brass to your cause if you have a project that’s not making progress. Wait for the head or deputy to ask how things are going then say “Fine, next term I’m hoping Mr S will let me…”

5 Your manager have right to tell you what to do. That might not seem too obvious if you’re straight out of college, where instructions are usually regarded as open to argument. So if the deputy says “Can you please go and supervise playtime.” Don’t come back with, “Yeah, man let me just grab a coffee…”

6 Try to develop an ear for the subtle shades of meaning to be found in some management phrases. For example, comments such as “You might try this..”or “That might be OK, but it might be better to…” are usually meant as instructions.

7 Do you feel you’re being bullied? Maybe you are, but maybe you’re just not used to acting on instructions from more senior staff. If you think a manager is ill-treating you there are established procedures for making a complaint. Find out what they are and stick to them. If you think you have a grievance, contact your professional association and make dated notes of particular incidents. Vague complaints about attitudes won’t wash.

8 Don’t monopolise or suck up to the senior management. Even if this approach has some short term influence, it will go down like a lead balloon with other staff and won’t win you many friends among the rest of your colleagues.

9 If you want a serious talk with a manager, don’t rely on catching them in the corridor or at break. Ask for a date and time – maybe after school. Make notes on what you want to say.

10 Managers and mentors can often be reticent in voicing criticism, so you might come away form a briefing (after a lesson observation for example) no wiser than when you went in. Always pin them down by asking ‘What exactly do you mean’.

Source: http://newteachers.tes.co.uk/news/know-where-you-are-pecking-order/45715

Using observation to sharpen your behaviour management!

It's too easy to get stuck in a rut when it comes to your behaviour management techniques - but observing other teachers can help shake it up

It's easy to get stuck in a groove with behaviour management: we become accustomed to our routines, which is why we call them routines after all.

This is how we often work as teachers; we scamper into a place that offers us the illusion of security and, unless we are vigilant, we become residents there, rather than tourists. Here are some simple ideas for shaking up your assumptions, and actually getting better at behaviour management rather than simply treading water.
 

1. Observe another teacher

This is one of the best things you can do with your training time. We don’t learn from books half as well as we do from watching teaching in action, and then doing it ourselves. Watch a teacher you admire, or one who is renowned for good control. Watch what they do. Take notes on nothing but this feature of the lesson; what do the kids do; how does the teacher react/ pro-act? What happens next? Watch as though you were a scientist, looking for evidence, but don't go in with any assumptions. What works? That's all that matters.

2. Have a conversation with the teacher

Talk to them about what happened, and ask for their perspective on what happened. As an adult, your education should be a partnership with the coach/observed teacher. Your opinion has validity, and should be measured against the person you observed. Marry their insights to your own. If they're good, they'll realise that their way may not work for you, so be sensitive to that possibility. What is it about them that makes their way work for them? What would work for you?

3. Do it

Take away perhaps two, three central resolutions or techniques from the lesson, not any more - no one can implement too many novelties into their routine simultaneously. Have the same teacher observe you, and have a conversation about it later.

If you want to take it up a level, why not have yourself filmed and then see how you actually teach, as opposed to how you think you do. You will be, I guarantee, amazed, horrified and possibly intrigued. It's one of the best and bravest things you can do.

Source: http://newteachers.tes.co.uk/news/using-observation-sharpen-your-behaviour-management/46157

Behaviour: Noisy Year 7's

The problem: I am an NQT and my first lesson with Year 7 did not go well. I found it almost impossible to achieve quiet.

All my usual tricks - countdowns, three warnings, sending pupils out - didn’t work and barely any learning took place. How can I handle this class?

What you said

“One strategy I used was to make my expectations quite clear. Get them to write down the rules in silence and constantly refer to them - stamp out any behavioural issues immediately.”
Faldamir12

“Countdowns will not work with this age group. I know if I tried it with my Year 8s they would just laugh. In secondary school they have wised up and are unlikely to take it seriously.”
Angelil

“Countdowns do work - I use them through Years 7 to 11. I explain to them that it is a fair way of getting their attention and they all understand this and see it as a way to prevent them being moaned at for talking over the teacher.”
Random175

The expert view

Creating the right environment from the start, by communicating that the classroom has set rules, will encourage your pupils to engage in a focused manner. There are six steps to achieve this:

1. Greet the pupils outside the classroom by standing at the door and welcoming them in. Tell them to sit at their desks and complete a set task which you have previously prepared. Give out raffle tickets as they step into the classroom.

2. It is highly likely that one or two pupils will test the boundaries and will not enter the classroom as you want them to. If this occurs, promptly and assertively say to the pupil, “You’re not ready to come into the classroom - please wait there until you are ready to come in.”

3. Praise the pupils who are completing the set task and reinforce with raffle tickets.

4. Return to the pupil whom you have asked to wait outside the classroom and say to them, “Are you now ready to come into the classroom?” It is highly likely that the pupil will now be ready and will enter the classroom in a calm and focused manner.

5. Regularly “catch” each pupil doing the right thing and praise openly. Pupils love praise, and when they see others receiving it good behaviour becomes contagious.

6. Immediately nip undesirable behaviour in the bud. At the end of the lesson have the raffle draw and give the winner their prize, such as stationery. Repeat this process every time the pupils enter the classroom so they know what is expected of them.

Nicola Morgan is a behaviour management consultant and author of ‘Quick, Easy and Effective Behaviour Management Ideas for the Classroom’. For more information email info@nicolasmorgan.co.uk.

CHECKLIST

Do

• Prepare a task the pupils can get on with as soon as they sit at their desks.
• If any pupils refuse to enter the classroom quietly, make them wait outside until they have calmed down.
• Reinforce good behaviour with praise and rewards.

Don’t

• Allow poor behaviour to go unchallenged.

Source http://newteachers.tes.co.uk/news/behaviour-noisy-year-7s/23604

Preparing for your first teaching job

Tom Bennett offers practical advice for new teachers on how best to use the summer to get ready for the September term

After your pre-induction (if you had one) you face the prospect of six lovely weeks before you start the job properly. It goes without saying (so I’ll say it) that you should pick up a copy of the schemes of work, syllabuses and any resources the department has to help you teach your first term.

•  In terms of planning, it’s fair to say that you should have planned your first two weeks worth of lessons down to the resources and differentiation before you start. It will seem onerous, but the more you can do in Summer to get ready for your first week the better.

The first weeks are overwhelming, and more so if you have to plan all your lessons too; instead, get that part of the job out of the way, and then you can focus on delivering the lessons, behaviour and other matters of orientation.

• Pick up syllabuses and schemes of work. Read the bloody things.
• Get used to the layout of the school, and where all the important rooms are – toilets, staffroom, your classrooms, the office, the head’s office, the department rooms and offices, the playground (!), the canteen, the sin bin. Don’t be ‘the teacher wandering around looking lost’. Some schools have maps, so ask for one.
• Draw up seating plans and get class lists so that you can notionally have them seated and organized before they enter the room.
• Brush up on any topic you’ll be teaching if it feels rusty to you. The danger in this period is that you will over-plan. Depending on how tense you feel, you may be obsessing about it all a bit, or constantly worrying that there is something else you should be doing to get ‘readier’. There probably isn’t, unless you’re being really slack.
• Get your lessons planned, get your bearings, and that’s most of what you need to do. Teaching is an activity where you are learning all the time, and a considerable amount of it is done on the hoof; you can only plan so much before you’re simply planning to relieve anxiety.

So don’t kill yourself; enjoy your summer break (if you have one) and get rested. You’ll need it. Those first weeks were some of the strangest I have ever experienced in my professional life; in at the deep end doesn’t describe it.

Despite all the benefits of the pre-induction, the actual beginning to the induction year is a shock to the system comparable to the scalding hot/freezing cold Turkish bath cure. Let me describe how I felt in one word: busy. I had worked in Soho bars and restaurants on Saturday nights, New Years Eves, bank holidays and Notting Hill Carnivals; I have never felt a keener sense of relentless, endless labour and disorganization as I did in those weeks.

Source: 

Advice to help you handle your first assembly!

Ideas for class-based and whole-school activities; plus how to get your class to behave in assemblies

The last time you were in church might have been a tipsy midnight mass or a friend's wedding. But now you're a teacher, religion is back on the agenda. Schools are required to provide a daily act of collective worship. This can be unnerving if it's your turn and your experience of religion is a hazy mixture of hatchings, matchings and dispatchings of friends and family.

Only 20 per cent of schools begin their working day with the statutory "broadly Christian act of collective worship", but there will be an assembly of some kind - by year or house group, or, in smaller institutions, for the whole school, every day. Sooner or later, you'll be asked to take an assembly. Here's how.

In the same way as you would when planning a lesson, decide on your learning objectives.Keep them few and simple. You'll have at most 10 minutes to fill, and you'll have to spend some time giving out information.

A well run school will have a schedule of assembly subjects related to events in the school calendar but it may also include opportunities for delivering parts of the citizenship and PSHE curricula.

What you choose is less important than the ways in which you help your pupils build a positive group identity, and in making the values and purposes of the school their own. Assemblies, religious or not, are important in supporting the social, moral and spiritual growth of your pupils.

You'll need to work on your presentation skills. Use music to set the mood, and have it playing as pupils come in. Turning it off is a clear signal to even the largest groups that you're about to begin. Don't be afraid to use new technologies - a laptop and a portable projector can produce images that everyone in a large hall can see, and can let you share content from any medium.

Assembly rooms are bigger than classrooms. Will everyone be able to hear you? What about lines of sight - will everyone be able to see you? If you have visual aids, are they big enough to be visible from a distance? Eye contact is especially important when you're working with large groups, so pick three or four pupils in different parts of the room, and make eye contact with each of them in turn. You'll look engaged with the audience.

Aim to involve your audience. If the core of your assembly is a story, begin by asking questions to help pupils focus on its subject, and remember that stories are better told than read. Master the bones of the story then improvise around that structure. What you say will sound more personal and convincing. Remember to speak more slowly than usual, too. Give your words time to sink in.

Make pupils work. If one of your learning objectives is to get them to examine and to change their views on an issue, begin by taking a vote to establish what they think before your presentation, and take another after it. You might even use a mini-debate between two well-prepared pupils to help you make your point. Borrow formats and ideas from performing arts and television, such as hot seating, news reports, quiz shows.

Use your tutor group or class to research and deliver their own presentation, perhaps as a short play or interview. It's a good use of tutorial time, and will involve the performers in real learning.

Relate the subject of your assembly to pupils' own experience - take news items as your starting point, or situations from soap opera (or, even better, from The Simpsons). Help them take what they know and encourage them to think about it, and reflect on their own experience.

Use outside speakers. All the public services will be only too happy to visit you. Firemen and police dog handlers always go down well. Mobilise parents. They have a surprising range of skills and experience, so use them, too.

Finally, remember that pupils will be going off to lessons after you've finished with them, so don't over-excite them. Your colleagues won't thank you if they have to spend too much of the lesson to calm them down. End your assembly with a couple of minutes for reflection.

Assembly tips

• Keep it simple. There is plenty of time for all-singing, all-dancing extravaganzas once you have found your feet.

• Encourage children to brainstorm when you are planning your class assembly. Even young children will come up with exciting and fresh ideas.

• Child-generated props, masks and costumes add to the fun.

• Involve parents. Does your school usually invite parents to class assemblies? It may be a nice idea to record the assembly on video. The children will love to watch themselves performing, and working parents will appreciate the opportunity to see the assembly, although some schools and local authorities have policies that would preclude this.

• Ensure that every child has a part to play. No one must feel left out.

• Don't get too stressed about it. Assemblies should not interfere with classroom time.

Make sure your class behaves

Assemblies are unfortunately rife with opportunities for enterprising individuals to create havoc. Make sure your class understands that you expect them to file in and out calmly, and praise those who do, as well as children who have been particularly co-operative.

Position your children carefully. Separate any noisy cliques and friendship groups. Position any who can be disruptive at the end of the line and sit within calming distance. A touch on the shoulder and a stern look are often enough to quieten a child. If not, you are close enough to remove offenders quietly.

Take into account different religions

When planning assemblies or any kind of celebration first check out the different religions in your class. Here’s a quick guide. Jehovah's Witnesses do not celebrate birthdays, Valentine's, Mother's or Father's Days, or other unbiblical celebrations such as Guy Fawkes or harvest festival. Even Christmas and Easter are not celebrated as they are pagan holidays, or fall at the same time as pagan celebrations. Festivals of other faiths, for example, Diwali, are equally proscribed since "we do not celebrate holidays that have non-Christian religious origins or those that promote nationalism". Do not expect Witnesses to join classmates' birthday celebrations, attend firework displays or make Christmas cards that call for celebration (seasonal ones would be OK). Other faiths (Islam, Judaism) may have problems with material, such as Nativity plays, that assumes the divinity of Christ.

Source: http://newteachers.tes.co.uk/news/advice-help-you-handle-your-first-assembly/45539