Parent involvement in their child’s school environment plays an important role in positively influencing the learning of a student. In this way, not only does it foster parent-teacher communication, but it also enhances the level of interest parents develop in their child’s education. Since the relationship between a child and an instructor is an important determinant of student performance, achievement, and learning, engaging parents by making them aware about their child’s academic and extracurricular progress is significant. Although parent’s attention at home enhances the learning ability and performance of a child at school, their involvement in academic activities strengthens their bond with the child as well as the educator (Henderson & Mapp, 2002).
Despite the strategies of sending home notes to parents, asking them to volunteer at school or sending newsletters are amongst the top activities to involve families, findings show the low level of parent engagement which decreases with the increasing grade (Vaden-Kiernan & McManus, 2005). Since parent involvement in their child’s activities is of vital importance, to overcome the issue of declining parent engagement, one of the academic activities that could be designed to involve parents is the idea pertaining to communication. Since communicating through verbal and non verbal language holds great value, coming up with ideas of storytelling, reading and role playing can greatly increase the level of communication between the educator, parents and the children (Vaden-Kiernan & McManus, 2005). To involve all the three, parents and their children can be divided into teams. Each team would have six members; three parent-child pairs, with one educator as the in-charge. The educator would start with a phrase which would be completed by each member of the team. The phrases would end up in a story. Each team would have a different story. For instance, if for Team A, the educator gives the phrase of ‘I believe in,’ the parent member of that team would continue the given phrase by adding in a word/sentence such as ‘fate,’ The child would continue by saying ‘I can still recall the events such as my grandmother’s death, being kicked out of the house owned by my uncle, and the time when my mom had an accident. This made me realize how everything is just a matter of fate.’ In this way each member would add up a sentence ending up with a complete story. Once the story has been formulated, every instructor would guide its team to act on the story. The teacher with the help of the parents would try giving up roles to children depending on the weak areas which require attention. In this way, the parents would get acquainted with the shortcomings of their children and would start paying more attention. Such activities can take place on bi-weekly basis where each activity would target a different grade undertaking a varying activity that caters to the issues of the particular age group.
Hence, the whole idea of the story telling and acting is to give a recreational touch to an academic activity. In this way, communication between the parents and their children, teachers and the parents, and students and teachers, is fostered. This activity would polish the thinking and presenting ability of students who can perform well when they have the encouragement from their parents and their teacher (Miller & Pennycuff, 2008). Also this activity would help them minimize the fear of doing things which would also help deal with the phobia of Mathematics, of taking tests or making friends. Since literacy is seen to be most affected by interaction and social collaboration, this activity of would positively impact the reading skills of children (Dugan, 1997). The academic activity would also enable the reading, writing and imaginary abilities of children where expressing their imaginations would help eradicate a number of weaknesses of students. Thus, parent involvement in student academic activity aids in the development, growth and learning of students. Moreover, it helps the educator know more about the family and background of a child which is of great importance especially in the case of students who have special needs, a disability, or simply lack behind in any realm. Also, such activities give the clear picture of a child’s performance and his relations with peers and teachers enabling parents to focus on areas that need improvement.
REFERENCES
Dugan, J. (1997). Transactional literature discussions: Engaging students in the appreciation and understanding of literature. Reading Teacher, 51(2), 86-96.
Henderson, A. T., & Mapp, K. L. (2002). A new wave of evidence: The impact of school, family, and community connections on student achievement. Austin, TX: National Center for Family & Community Connections with Schools.
Miller, S., & Pennycuff, L. (2008). The power of story: Using storytelling to improve literacy learning. Journal of Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives in Education, 1(1), 36-43.
Vaden-Kiernan, N., & McManus, J. (2005). Parent and Family Involvement in Education: 2002–03 (NCES 2005–043). U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office
