The Teacher-Parent Relationship

Effective teacher-parent relationships are extremely important when it comes to helping our children to succeed in the classroom. The partnership that you as the teacher form with parents will ensure that problems will be addressed quickly, and that the needs of your parents and students are taken into account in any decision-making process that comes about.

 The first great step in fostering this relationship is the parent-teacher conference. The initial conference will set the tone with respect to desires and expectations for the upcoming school year and overcome any communication barriers. Also, equally important I feel is coming up with a plan for regular and on-going contact—and making sure that you document every time you reach out to the parent. Your goal here is to ensure that problems or issues of concern are dealt with quickly to everyone’s satisfaction.

I am going to share with you some tips that will help you to develop a strong relationship with your parents.

 Tip #1: Establish a relationship of mutual trust. Sending home an occasional note or making a phone call can go a long way to developing a productive relationship.

Tip #2: When both parties agree as to the method of communication then unexpected needs can be met in a timely manner.

Tip #3: Encourage your parents to ask how they can help you overcome roadblocks and promote positive change—particularly if they have a student with special needs.

Tip #4: Help parents to become active participants in supporting learning by sharing information about class routines. Let parents know about your grading criteria, project expectations, field trips, etc. do whatever it takes to keep parents in the loop.

Tip #5: Encourage parents to keep you informed as to issues at home that may affect their child at school. Giving the teacher a heads-up will enhance the learner experience, whereby increasing the effectiveness of the teacher to help the child.

Tip #6: Make sure to inform parents as to your rules and procedures for the classroom. You may want to ask for parent feedback with respect to behavioral expectations and your discipline plan for the year.

Tip #7: It’s very helpful for the teacher to provide parents with an overview of content area of instruction and your own teaching style.

Tip #8: Encourage your parents to provide you with past positive (as well as negative) school experiences, so that you will be able to use that information to your advantage with these children. Have the parents share with you those activities that have been successful in terms of motivation and improving their performance.

Tip #9: Obviously, every child is unique, so be cognizant of the fact that parents and teachers have their own unique characteristics and styles working with children as well.

Tip #10: Teachers and parents should remind each other that one way to promote success is to make students feel special about their learning. And that success—even the small ones need to be acknowledged and praised.

I think it goes without saying that getting parents on your side and working together as a team can greatly enhance all aspects of a child’s successful school experience.

Let me share some things that I’ve done for years that has paid off tremendously in terms of building effective teacher-parent relationships. First thing is that during the beginning of the school year I would make it a point to actually talk on the phone to every parent within the first 10 days of school. Basically, to introduce or reintroduce myself, and to ask the parent if they had any questions or concerns at this time that I can address. I’ve had parents often tell me that this is the first time that a teacher has ever called me during the start of the school year. I’d highly recommend that you do this!

The other thing that went over really well was that I would make 2 positive phone calls home every week – one boy & one girl. I have to tell you, I can’t count the times that a parent would tell me, “I thought you called because my child was in trouble. Long story short, parents loved those phone calls. This is one sure-fire way to get parents on your side. Then when you do have to deliver bad news, I believe parents will be a lot more understanding.

Let’s discuss other ways to develop a productive teacher-parent relationship. Invite parents into your classroom. Even if it’s just to help you sort out papers or read to the class. It’s great to have parents talk about their occupations to the kids as well. Find ways that you can get you parents to volunteer in your classroom—like helping out with a class party!

Here's another great tip, send home weekly newsletters to let your parents know what’s going on in school. Share with them upcoming areas of study, upcoming field trip, any other special news or announcements.

A good way to connect home & school is to have your students write about what they’ve learned in class this week to their parents, and then have parents respond back to the child in their writing journals.

I want to circle back to the parent-teacher conference. Remember to always start off the conversation with a positive statement about the child, and then discuss no more than 2-3 areas for improvement. And finally, end the conference with another positive remark about their child. And of course, be sure to thank them for attending!

In summary, forming a positive partnership with your parents is vital to the success of your students. And by keeping the lines of communication open the children will invariably be the beneficiaries of a successful, productive classroom experience.

Making the Case for Teaching Cursive Handwriting

There are some who feel that the teaching of cursive handwriting has lost its relevance in this day and age. Some say that it’s not a necessary or a required skill set for the 21^st century.

It could be argued that due to the advances in technology all that’s really needed is training on keyboarding. Although technology is a great thing and being proficient in keyboarding is advantageous, cursive handwriting offers many benefits that I feel have been overlooked.

 First, let’s take a look at the top 10 reasons for teaching cursive handwriting in our schools.

1.   Cursive handwriting stimulates the brain in ways that typing on a keyboard does not. It improves the interplay between the left and right hemispheres of the brain. It increases mental effectiveness and builds neural pathways.

According to Virginia Berninger, a researcher and professor at the university of Washington stated, I quote, “Pictures of brain activity have illustrated that sequential finger movements used in handwriting activated massive regions of the brain involved in thinking, language, and working memory. Handwriting differs from typing because it requires executing sequential finger strokes to form a letter, whereas keyboarding only involves touching a key.” End quote.

2.   The improved ability to read cursive becomes evident. When you have individuals that cannot read cursive handwriting, then consequently, they’re cursively illiterate. Just look around at many different settings out there in society – the ability to read cursive writing is often times required.

 3.   Cursive Writing is much faster than the start and stop strokes of actual printing. So, that being the case this affords individuals more fluidity in their writing and increases attention span. This means that greater amounts of writing can be done.

 4.   The act of writing in cursive improves fine motor skills. It develops one’s sensory skills. It builds the neural foundation to be able to do many of the day-to-day things like button one’s shirt, fastening a sweater, and tying one’s shoes to name a few.

 5.   There was a study done with college students and what they found was when these students wrote a paragraph in cursive one week later, they still retained the material much better as opposed to printing the material or using a keyboard.

 6.   The ease of learning. Due to the stop and start of forming letters while printing is much more difficult than cursive writing. With respect to students with learning challenges such as dyslexia, dysgraphia, and attention span issues, cursive is of particular value.

7.   Learning how to write in cursive increases self-discipline, because of its complexities. Cursive writing is associated with the development of fine motor skills, as well as hand-eye coordination.

 8.   Cursive leads to more improved legibility and spelling ability. Cursive requires kids to write from let to right so that the letters join in proper sequence and spacing.

 9.   Cursive handwriting improves the legibility, fluidity, and the aesthetics of one’s signature.

 10.  When an individual masters one’s cursive handwriting skills, it improves their confidence to communicate with the written word.

 Why cursive writing is good for the brain

In the 21^st century many K-12 school systems around the world are phasing out cursive handwriting in favor of digital devices for remote and in-class learning.

According to Audrey Van der Meer, a neuropsychologist professor at NTNU in a news release stated the following: I quote. “The use of pen and paper gives the brain more “hooks” to hang your memories on. Writing by hand creates much more activity in the sensorimotor parts of the brain.” She added, “A lot of senses are activated by pressing the pencil or pen on paper, seeing the letters you write, and hearing the sound you make while writing. These sense experiences create contact between different parts of the brain and open the brain up for learning.” End quote.

I think a good take away here is that writing by hand helps the brain learn a lot better.

Let's consider the 5 benefits of cursive writing:

 1.   Stimulating the brain. It has been scientifically proven that cursive writing stimulates the brain in ways that typing on a keyboard cannot. And there’s quite a bit of research that supports that.

 2.   Cursive develops motor skills – when children are actively using cursive, they begin to learn how to position their paper and pencil. Kids also learn how much pressure is needed to bear down on their paper and to form words and creating readable sentences.

 3.   Self-discipline and professionalism – There are numerous benefits to cursive handwriting namely develops self-discipline because it takes work, lots of practice to form letters of the alphabet and to form words. Also, aids in the development of fine motor skills, and hand-eye coordination.

 4.   There is a potential correlation between cursive handwriting and grammar, spelling and overall understanding. The reason for this stems from the fact that there’s a lot of repetition when learning how to form letters.

A study conducted in Quebec, Canada has shown that children who learn cursive at a young age are likely to become better spellers and writers. Moreover, this results in children and adults write faster and fluently.

5.   Children who suffer with dyslexia often times get their letters, and letter sounds mixed up. But the research has shown that cursive handwriting improves reading, spelling and sentence structure as well.

 In summary – I firmly believe that teaching our children cursive handwriting is just as important, if not more so than keyboarding. After all, the research bears this out. There’s been study after study showing how cursive interacts with the brain thereby making neural connections.

 

Teaching Spelling

When I was in elementary school, I remember thinking back then that once I had finished the spelling test, I’m just going to forget a lot of the words.

I mean there was no context in terms of the spelling words – just a random set of words. There was no real incentive for learning these words – they weren’t used in any reading or writing assignments.

 

Which begs the question how do children learn to spell? 

Well, initially youngsters learn how to spell in the first and second grades. By that I mean high frequency words, or sight words. And most of this early learning is rote memorization. This goes without saying that the more students use their spelling words in writing activities the more that they will eventually learn how to spell words correctly.

 

Many of the spelling words come from the Dolch list – the selection of words make up 50-70% of all text in children’s books.

 

What are some things that the teacher can do to foster good spelling skills?

Well, for starters the teacher must encourage reading – let’s face it, the more a child reads and sees a word spelled correctly the easier it is for them to transfer knowledge from short term to long term memory.

 

Another strategy you may find useful is for the teacher to say the word and spell it out loud and by doing so will encourage students to do the same.

 

Display the words on a word wall. Once you introduce a word to your class put it up on a bulletin board. If practical put up as many words as you possibly can on your bulletin board, and eventually over time will transfer to active knowledge.

 

Have your students work with crossword puzzles and games which get students involved. Games such as hang-man are even better because it incentivizes kids to spell the word correctly in order to win.

One more thing can be a great help to practice spelling is “touch typing.” Basically, students type and spell words over and over again, until they learn how to reach the keys for letters they represent.

 

Let’s address why spelling is important. Correct spelling is in fact important.  Research conducted by The National Commission on Writing for American Families, Schools, and Colleges (2005) reported that 80% of the time an employment application is doomed if it is poorly spelled. Here are other examples where spelling is important:

 

·        Writing so others can read and understand

·        Looking up words in a dictionary

·        Filing alphabetically and more

 

Spelling is important when it comes to reading. Research says that learning to spell and learning to read are closely connected – they rely on much of the same underlying knowledge such as relationships between letters and sounds.

 

Spelling is also important when it comes to writing. Research also points out a strong relationship between spelling and writing. Writers who must think too hard how to spell use up valuable cognitive resources needed for higher levels of composition.

 

Spelling needs to be explicitly taught. The big take away here is that one can’t assume just because students are making progress in reading that spelling does not need to be taught – that’s absolutely not true. In a longitudinal study conducted by “Scientific Studies of Reading (2005) found students growth in passage comprehension remained close to average from 1^st through 4^th grade, their spelling scores dropped considerably by 3^rd grade, and continued to decline in 4^th grade.

 

Let’s take a look at spelling strategies. The average person uses somewhere around 10,000 words freely and can recognize some 30,000 – 40,000 words. Now, here’s the good news – one doesn’t have to be able to correctly spell all the words in his/her listening, reading and speaking vocabulary to be an effective speaker.

 

A basic vocabulary of 2,800 – 3,000 well selected words should form the basics of spelling instruction. One important note to remember that when choosing words for spelling instruction, focus on regular spelling patterns, high-frequency words, and frequently misspelled words.

 

Let’s consider the traditional approach to spelling. Like I mentioned at the beginning of this podcast once I finished the weekly spelling test, I forgot a lot of them.

 

·        Rote memorization is not an effective way to learn how to spell.

·        With traditional spelling instruction students are passive learners.

·        Quite frankly, with this type of instruction spelling is very boring.

·        Also, every child is given the same list of spelling words to study – whether they are being challenged or not. Using this method of instruction only a few kid’s needs are being met.

 

I want to talk about a great alternative to the traditional approach to spelling. I know for me personally, what I found to be much more effective and interactive [and way less boring] is an instruction method called “Word Study.” This method of instruction down by ability levels based whereby addressing student needs.

 

This system is not based on the random memorization of words. A word study program is an approach that not only addresses word recognition, but vocabulary, and phonics as well.

 

In a nutshell word study provides students with opportunities to investigate and understand word patterns in words. Students learn that spelling patterns exist, and that these patterns. Help to explain how words are spelled, read and written. The cycle of instruction might include but not limited to the following word study activities:

 

·        Choosing words for students to sort

·        Have students find the pattern in their reading and writing

·        Activities to help students relate the pattern to previously acquired knowledge.

·        Illustrating the word.

·        Naming a synonym or antonym for each of the words.

·        Use the word in a sentence.

 

All in all, Word Study invariably is a much better approach to learning how to spell instead of giving a list of words out on Monday and giving a test on Friday.

 

 

 

 

 

Creating Effective Guided Reading Groups

What is a guided reading group?

Let’s start by discussing what is a guided reading group. The guided reading group is a method by which small groups of students with similar reading abilities are grouped together. We’re talking about a group of 4 – 6 students [ideally no more than 6.]

The goal here is for the teacher to work with students directly as opposed to teaching a whole class where the range of student abilities differ drastically.

Guided reading works off a leveling system that labels books A – Z, with A being the easiest and Z the hardest. Students are supported in the small group approach and challenged to be problem solvers.

Forming groups for guided reading:

Forming groups for guided reading like I stated at the beginning of this podcast children are group together based upon similar learning needs and process text at about the same level. Also, you want to make sure to keep students within 1-2 levels of each other. Now, I’m not saying that, that’s the only way to create guided reading groups., There may be times that you group kids based upon mixed abilities based upon a common learning need – for example, how to read tables and charts. One thing to take into consideration is that guided reading groups are not set in stone – by that, I mean groups should remain fluid – whereby students can move in and out of groups as appropriate.

When it comes to forming your guided reading groups setting up and grouping your kids are critical elements of a successful guided reading experience.

How to set up your guided reading groups:

When you’re in the process of grouping your students, it’s always best to use more than one type of assessment to really get a good accurate picture of the student. It would be prudent to use several sources of assessment information – for instance, running records, Debels, fluency testing just to name a few.

Once you’ve completed your assessments and determined which students will go into what group, you’ll want to set up some type of organizational system to track progress.

What I used in my classroom were tubs that I purchased from the dollar store and placed the children’s names on cardstock which is laminated and hot glued on the front of the tub. In this way students knew what guided reading group they were assigned.

Let’s turn our attention to planning a guided reading group:

 What I would typically do first with my group is take a few minutes to talk about the pictures, bold-faced words, the text and make predictions. I’d also remind students to use the strategies that were previously discussed during our mini lesson. Then, I would have students independently read the text. At which time I would select a student at random so that they could whisper read a portion of text to me. Lastly, I would check for comprehension and what strategy or strategies that they used during their reading.

Selecting texts for guided reading:

First, you want to select a book that is appropriate for that specific guided reading group, but enjoyable as well. The reading should be purposeful – now what do I mean by that – well, this simply means that there is a specific reason why you are reading that book.

Secondly, remember that the purpose for reading a book is not to learn more about reading – Again, the purpose must be authentic. Perhaps you’re studying a certain genre, like biography; or you’re reading an informational text.

Finally, the text must be engaging for the students – if not, then it’s really in my view a waste of time.

When you get a moment for more information regarding guided reading groups check out Fountas & Pinnell’s book: Guiding Reader’s and Writers.   It’s a plethora of information that you will find extremely valuable.