Reflection on Recent Home School Learning Conversations, (Parent Interviews)

In week 5 of this term we had our first formal interviews with our family members to discuss students current achievement and our next learning focuses for each of them.

I try to get all parents and caregivers in for this interview, as it help our families to get an understanding of where their children are currently achieving and is a lead into the student led conferences which happen in Term 3.  This is where the students are able to say this is where I was in Term 2 but look how far I have come with the goals that my teacher shared with you back then.  It also helps parents and caregivers to get a better understanding of the report as I am there to explain each part and can show the evidence from testing and book work that has led me to make the decision about where their child is currently achieving.  This is definitely preferable to parents just receiving the report in the mail and reading it by themselves.  The other reason is that meeting with parents they are able to get a clear understanding of where their students are currently sitting in terms of the national standards, and how they can support at home so that the learning continues at home.  Parents can see that they also play a vital part in their child's learning.

I was really pleased this year that all of my families turned up at the allotted time over the 2 interview days and I made myself flexible so I could also meet with parents who were unable to make the two days.  This meant I could meet face to face with 90% of my families.  The other 2 families I could not meet with I had discussions with about their child's learning via a phone call.

I felt that all discussions we constructive and honest, and that parents went away feeling well informed and with a clear picture of where their child is currently achieving and where thier next steps are.

I listened carefully to parents questions and demands, and their perspectives on different things I had noticed in their child, and things they had noticed from school.

From the parent interviews, a change that I have made in my practice is to do with students personal reading that they do at home for home learning.  For home learning in my class, one task i set night is 15 minutes of personal reading time.  In previous years, my students have been avid readers and would diligently choose books from the library to take home and read with.  However at the recent parent interviews, quite a few parents asked me about reading material for this personal reading session, commenting that their child was not bringing any reading material home from class or the school library.  Now I think it is important that parents play a part in providing reading material for their child, not nesscerely purchasing books for children to read, but providing family trips to the local library and issuing books out that they can read as a family or for children to read independently.  However I know that this is not achievable for some families and/or it doesn't happen.  So because of this, I have decided that each reading group will take home the reader/school journal their group is reading either each day or every second day to share with families.  This will ensure that they are not only reading each day, but that they are also practicing reading at home at their instructional reading level.  The stories in the journals are shortish, so it's not too much of an hard task.  sometimes what they are reading for their group guided reading sessions is a novel, and in these situations, they can bring their novels home and read a chapter either together with someone or independently.

To support with this, I sent a letter home to parents explaining the change, and the reasons for it.  I also sent home activities and comprehension 'teacher-like' questions that they could use to support their child's reading of the text if they wished.

It was really wonderful to be able to come up with such a simple solution to a problem quite a few parents were having difficulties with, and it will have such a positive effect on students reading habits and hopefully their levels too.

One goal I would like to work on for the next home-school learning conversation session (which is the student led conferences in Term 3) is structuring the interviews so that it works  for the parents of children whose mother tongue is not English.  so they understand completely where their child is currently achieving and what his learning clearly shows.