Teaching teams held parent information sessions this week about curriculum expectations for the year – 35% of parents attended, successful?
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Greg
Really agree with your last line about all working in the same direction. I liked the community feel aspect.
Robert, we had term 1 parent teacher interviews [week 6-7 of the term] for a few years with a similar focus and got some useful information and a far greater parent turnout.
I have to say that teachers indicated that the predominate parent question was still how was my child going. Teacher felt unprepared for these questions except from a personal and interpersonal learning perspective.
Teachers said that in early term 1 with busy scheduling of things like the 10 day swimming program and an early year 5/6 camp that they had barely finished the rigorous testing expected for each child let although analysis the results to report to parents.
Perhaps the parent interviews if held in week 1 or 2 might resolve this.
Of course battling with an industrial agreement that has time in lieu clauses for hours worked after the standard day makes interviews challenging to schedule at any time but particularly in the first weeks of school.
Probelm resolved this year for mid year interviews with a statewide pupil free reporting day in term 2.
All in all its a question we ask each year – interviews or information nights with a specific focus. I wonder if the use of blogs and online discussions might also be a feature of parent communication in years to come.
Hi Mark,
same idea, week earlier, smaller turnout (ours was about 20%). The first time we have had these meetings though.
My plan is to make them week 2 of the year and have a ‘takeaway tea’ evening so we can have a picnic/shared time before hand that involves all families and then there is the ‘community’ focus as well.
I think these are a good thing to do and serve to inform families of our goals for children and programme organisation. The progammes are always going to be more successful if we are all working in the same direction.
cheers
Greg
At our school this year, we did away with the former parent information sessions, and had interviews with each parent. The expectations and other information was all given to parents on a handout. The focus for the interview, then, was for the teacher to learn from the parent as much as they could about each student.
In terms of focussing the discussion on improving the learning outcomes for each student, the individual interviews won hands down.