| Home | Contact Info |
|
”Our second Parent Teacher Conferences to discuss student report cards will take place during this month, March 1st 19th. This is your opportunity to talk to your child’s teacher about their progress in school, as well as to share concerns and seek advice about how you can best help them at home. Hopefully, you’ll leave the conference feeling confident, with a clear understanding of their needs and a few new strategies for making nightly homework less stressful and more productive. STOP! What’s wrong with this picture? It’s true that the support of the parent and the teacher are critical to a child’s success in school, but if the child is missing from the conversation about “how” they are doing and “what” they need to do in order to continue to progress, we may as well plan on holding their hands through middle school, high school, and college because they’ll never learn to become self reliant. With this thought in mind as you ready yourself for the next conference it’s important to think about how you will use the information gained to gradually help your child become a more independent learner who is responsible to a greater extent for his or her own success. Remember, it doesn’t matter if your child is in fifth grade and your goal is to break bad habits, or in kindergarten and your goal is building a framework for growing responsibility, you can use these strategies. First, prior to the conference ask your child what they think the teacher will say about them. This will give you a perspective about “how” the child sees him or herself as a learner in the school environment. In some cases it may be productive to ask your child if they’d like to attend the conference with you. Next, jot down some concerns or questions you may have for the teacher. As you review the report card, ask to see samples of your child’s work that will help you to better understand the grades given. And…don’t forget to ask the questions you have and discuss all concerns. Now, here’s the most important strategy of all, finding a way to communicate all of this valuable information to the center of the conference, your child. I guarantee you that if you skip this step your time spent at the conference was wasted. Your goal here is to model for your child “how” to view their strengths and areas that are in need of improvement and “how” to develop a plan for continued progress. At the end of this newsletter you’ll find two graphic organizers, which you may want to use in constructing a plan with your child. The first one lends itself to the type of planning you can do in conjunction with this report card. While you should try to put as many examples aspossible under the heading, “What I already do well”, you should limit the “Areas to develop” to one at a time. You should monitor their progress on a weekly basis or give your child feedback on the progress you witness during nightly homework, and provide weekly rewards (as simple a video rental, pizza, or extra time with you) based on improvements made. The second graphic organizer can be used for project work, which is typical in grades 3-5. Once a child learns to plan they will be successful in completing a project without constant reminders from parents. You may also be interested in a book by Lee Canter called “Homework Without Tears”, which is available via amazon.com. It gives practical suggestions for organizing successful homework time with an emphasis on motivating children and teaching them to be responsible. Like most issues that we face in guiding our children through life,
everything takes time and patience. By example, such as this planning
process, we can “show” our kids “how” to succeed. |
|
|
|
Copyrights 2002 | Last Site Update: 09/09/2004