A famous meta-analysis of research on homework, published in 2006 by Harris Cooper and colleagues, found that traditional homework in grades younger than sixth does not contribute to academic achievement. The very weak connection between traditional homework and academic achievement led PASB’s Early Childhood Center and Elementary divisions to stop assigning traditional homework and instead encourage nightly Home Reading. Research does show that reading nightly has a huge impact on student achievement across the curriculum, as does a parent’s interest in the child’s learning. Reading experts, Samuels and Wu (2001), say research is clear on the benefits of daily reading, with students picking their own books, reading aloud and listening to a fluent adult reader. When reading, children’s curiosity can be peaked, imagination evoked, and vocabularies built. There is a direct correlation between how much a child reads and their academic achievement. Some parents say that with no homework, they don’t know what is happening in their child’s class. I suggest that you ask your child specific questions about their learning. Here is a list of ideas (encontre o artigo aqui) of what to talk about. Elementary parents are also encouraged to look on SeeSaw to get glimpses of what students are doing throughout the day and start conversations from there. If you, as a parent, want to assign your child homework, you are welcome to ask your child’s teacher for suggestions of what might help. However, as a school we believe that children reading, playing sports, spending time with their family, and having a set bedtime will be most beneficial to academic achievement. The Primary Years Program (PYP) supports student agency and building curiosity. Ask your child what they want to learn about at home and dive into the topic together. Have fun together reading! Enjoy researching your next vacation! Children are only young once, play together and laugh. The learning will come, we promise! Harris Cooper; Jorgianne Civey Robinson; Erika A Patall. (2006) Does Homework Improve Academic Achievement? A Synthesis of Research, 1987-2003. Review of Educational Research; Spring 2006 (76:1) Research Library Core pg. 1-62. Samuels, S. J. & Wu, Y. (2001) How the Amount of Time Spent on Independent Reading Affects Reading Achievement: A Response to the National Reading Panel. Minnesota: University of Minnesota.
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63 parent meetings about classlists with anxiety ridden parents! Really?!?? No thank you! When I became principal in February, I knew I needed to shift the culture. I wanted the first day of school to be joyful and fun, to set the tone of learning for the year ahead...My vision was to have school = a place students want to learn and parents felt at ease. Buy HOW would I shift the culture? This question was in the back of my mind for months, I was reading, talking to other international school principals, talking to the staff, gathering ideas and I outlined a process clearly with dates and communication objectives. The process started in March and continued through to August! It seemed early to start but it was actually right on time. Shifting culture takes planning and communication. Teachers and the school counselor told me that the biggest parent concerns about class list assignments in the past were:
The message of the parents lacking trust was loud and clear. To enact the vision, we developed a plan that was clear, timely and intentional to address the two concerns. We needed to build trust with the families through ensuring their child had at least one friend in the class and a loving knowledgeable teacher. It all started in April, we communicated with families and students that we were going to ask the students to list four friends they wanted to learn with next school year. We guaranteed the child would be placed with at least one of the four friends they listed. We found a tool called Class Creator to help us enter all the friends and information about the students. On May 1st, we got Class Creator rolling! Student-generated friends lists were entered into the system as well as information about each child individually. Teachers loved working with this tool! No more sticky notes and name cards being shuffled around. This tool serves as everyone's’ collective memory and let us see the dynamics of a class (academic areas high, low, behavior, and more!). Class Creator remembers it all and visually represents the information for teachers to manipulate to get just the right balance per class. Even though school policy states that the school staff makes the classlists regardless of parent requests, as the principal I listened to parents that wanted to express concern or tell me more about their child. I documented each meeting. I had 27 meetings. This was DOWN from years past. Why? We think it was because of the friends list. We made a commitment to honor the friends list that the students generated. We were listening to students and that was the start of building parents’ trust. Generally our parent community distrusts teachers they do not know. By in large, they would prefer their child in a teacher’s class that has proven themselves the year before. Our challenge as an international school is that we always have a couple of new teachers each year. I wondered how can we build trust early, before they even meet the teacher? We made a three part plan to address the second point of concern, mistrust of new teachers.
Part 1- We decided to have each and every teacher write a short biography about themselves. The homeroom teachers were a little longer than the others and included a “fun” photograph to show their personality. The biographies were published in English and Portuguese then beautifully laid out with a PASB pride theme. Finally, the day came to email the class lists with biographies home 1 ½ days before the start of school. In the past, the school would post the list on paper at the school entrance at 4:00 pm the evening before school started. Parents would come to campus, anxiety ridden, to check the lists and Whatsapp them to all their friends thus spreading anxiety. Then the first day of school 63 parents would be lined up ready to complain as the staff tried to rush the students into the classrooms. NOT a great vibe…. So, emailing the class list with the photos and biographies a little earlier was the plan so parents did not have to Whatsapp eachother for the information. Imagine, getting a list of classmates and a PDF of ALL the people that plan to love and educate your child for the school year. Smiling faces, horseback riders, hikers, bungee jumpers, families with children and even a graphically enhanced photo with a teacher looking like Thor, were going to be the teachers….who wouldn’t want these friendly faces to teach their children?!?! We sent the classlists and biographies out by email at 4:00 exactly using the Google add on Boomerang and …. Silence… The next day I went to work braced for a list of emails requesting meetings...and...nothing. The secretary, school counselor and I were surprised, relieved and a little bit shocked. We were still holding our breath for the bomb to drop. A few parents did contact us, 8 to be exact, over the day and a half before the start of school. More on those parents a little later in the article. Part 2- The second part of the building parent trust plan was to host a fun filled first moment of the school year, from the time the children and parents walk on campus, August 1st. We hired a marching band to play in the front of school and at the right moment walk the families and students to the “Kick Off the Year” Assembly. This was a first of its kind first day of school. The band was fun, everyone was talking, smiling and bouncing around, the school mascot made an appearance greeting the community. We went to the gym for the assembly where year level teams, students support services and the specialist teachers presented themselves on the stage.
Disclosure: At first, some teachers were leerly of this idea...normally we put students on stage to present, why did they have to?!? Yes, they did because my vision was to build trust, have the students and parents see the teachers, as a team, who were fun, funny and interesting! I wanted the community to see that the teachers really know and love kids. The teachers came up with a variety of performances: a Brazilian percussion performance, an animated video of themselves, a choreographed dance with rewritten lyrics to “Happy”, a game show, and three silly skits where teachers were lost, fell off an invisible bench and were searching for “it”. The performances had the students engaged and laughing. After the teacher performances were complete, the teachers, students and parents went to the homeroom classes together. After about 20 minutes or so, it was finally time for parents to leave campus and children to start building their relationships in their classrooms. At this point, only two students cried….WAY fewer than the years before. The first day of school was a party with fun people who loved children! Mission accomplished. Part 3- We had to secure the deal, we had to finalize the parent trust-building plan. Open House was moved to after the third day of school, rather than third week. Parents were welcomed on campus again to meet and talk with the homeroom, Portuguese and specialist teachers. They also had a presentation from the administration. Our messages were all about communication, helpfulness and supporting students for success, “Our school professionals are here to support your child helping them be successful academically and socially.” During the question time, a parent took the microphone and congratulated the school for a great start! Again, mission accomplished. On August 6, I sit here typing this post and still only 8 class list complaints have been heard. The school counselor and I listened and helped parents understand their child’s placement. Of the eight complaints only three families mentioned they wanted to change classes and received more counseling and support. Only one family went to the superintendent who again did more counseling and as of now, zero families have formally requested to change classes. Part of me is still holding my breath waiting for the other shoe to drop, but the other part of me is celebrating because our team did it! Many people, including parents and staff, have commented that this year feels different, it feels joyful. We changed the culture of the first day of school from an anxiety ridden, mistrusting long line of complaining families to a culture of joyful, fun-loving excited students with more settled, calm trusting parents! School culture can be hard to change. Our process was long, well planned out and executed with professionalism from the entire team. Now, learning and more trusting parent relationships can commence. |
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