Parenting - Assist parents and guardians with parenting skills at home to better support student learning, and helps schools learn more about families.
Communicating - Engaged in two-way communication between schools and home about school programs and student progress.
Volunteering - Provide various opportunities for volunteering to support the school and students.
Learning at Home - Involve parents, guardians and families with the school work and the decision making.
Decision Making - Include parents, guardians and families in the school decisions.
Collaborating with the Community - Include the community as a resource for the schools.
Ask parents to set aside a specific time each day for doing homework. Ask parents to read to or listen to students for a specific time each day. Library books, hobby books, newspapers, catalogs can be used as the source of this activity.
Create student homework notebooks; homework assignments are written in the notebook, teachers and family communicate about how the student is doing; this provides a means of notifying parents that students are making progress, that problems are beginning to arise, and remind parents of upcoming meetings, conferences, etc.
Develop a written contract with parents that include those things of particular importance to student’s academic improvement: getting enough rest, eating properly, doing homework on a routine basis, limiting TV watching, etc.
Suggest questions for parents to ask students about homework assignments to stimulate conversations about learning.
Provide homework assignments that families can help with — watching a news program on television, discussing a particular question with family, interviewing a neighbor, creating an object or drawing a picture, etc.
Ask parents to sign homework.
Develop parent/student journals, asking parents and students to answer the same question. Examples: What was your most surprising experience? Who do you most admire and why? What do you like to do best of all?
Create student assignment notebooks that students use to write homework assignments, parents check and support students in doing homework, and parents and teachers use it to share information about student progress or difficulties.
Maximize messages by using humor, cartoons or other interesting design elements, quotes or success stories.
Make a commitment to reach out to at least one parent every week with positive messages about the child’s progress and let them know about upcoming events.
Be willing to ask parents to share experiences and information from their work or culture; demonstrate specific skills from work or hobbies; talk about how school work relates to the world of work — how a carpenter needs geometry or how a salesman needs writing skills.
Invite parents to accompany students on field trips or other extracurricular events. Parents can be effective group leaders in these instructional settings.
Ask parents to use their business connections and skills to support the school.
Source: Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence and the Partnership for Kentucky Schools