Parents as Teachers Parents teach their children all the time. To help them:
Publish a monthly calendar of learning activities for each day to be done at home.
Plan a book sale. Admission: two or three used books. Give children a ticket for each book they turn in. Then allow them to exchange tickets for books other children have brought.
Provide parents with packets of learning materials to use during vacations.
Prepare a list of suitable books as suggestions for age appropriate gifts.
Provide easy-to-read information and fact sheets on the local education system.
Invite parents to an evening of listening to stories their children have authored, read by the children themselves.
Establish a school speaker's bureau with parents or relatives of children sharing their experiences, hobbies, job information, etc.
Put on "Make-It_Take-It" workshops to help parents become more effective teachers of their children at home. Provide enough time for explaining the "how-to's", the use of the materials, and some home teaching tips.
Consider organizing a young writers workshop in your area.
Consider sponsoring a Read-A-Thon at your school. Choose a format agreeable to everyone (a goal of either a certain number of minutes, a certain number of books or a certain number of pages) and have students obtain pledges from friends and relatives. When the period of the Read-A-Thon is over, recognize publicly the reading achievements of the students, the amount of money raised, and the contributions of staff and parents involved.
In cooperation with your school board and school, establish a district and schoolwide homework policy.
Consider starting a Reading Circle or an Open Book/Open Future program at your school
Establish a "Homework Hotline" for parents to check on nightly assignments.
Consider sponsoring a writing contest to motivate children to write. A school board in Quebec, with the support of a local publishing company, organized such a contest. Pupils were presented with a topic ("As a birthday present for your mother, you decide to tidy up the house - by putting everything in alphabetical order - that means putting As with As, Bs with Bs, and so on.") and certificate of participation for all. The best three per grade were awarded a book, then asked to write a story about Francis, a very disorganized boy who drops his dictionary and all the letters fall out. When Francis picks up the letters and stuffs them back higgledy-piggledy, the results are chaotic. Winners of this round, selected by a committee of teachers, were awarded books donated by the publisher at a special ceremony. Their entries were also collected in a booklet published by the school board.
Recruit and train parents to provide a wide range of volunteer services - lunchroom monitoring, paper grading, chaperoning field trips, resource person in classroom, and tutoring.
Use parent volunteers in class to help those children who are not helped at home.
Teachers can ask parents to sign a contract to hear their child read for ten minutes, four evenings a week.
Buddy Reading (Shared Reading) works well in schools.
Classroom libraries encourage reading. Ask each child to bring two favourite books to share.
(Taken from the "Parent Resource Binder: The Essential Link", published by the Newfoundland and Labrador Home and School Federation, p. 91-92).
