Your Child Left Behind - What Teachers Could Do To Help Parents
(For more on daily lesson expectations, go to link shown above)
How Teachers Can Help Parents
Commit to and provide a lesson plan at the beginning of the school year for each full semester detailing subjects to be studied based on an estimated time line.
Math: Send home math homework every night. Provide an online or real textbook, preferable with an online video teacher explaining the lesson, so that a parent can learn to help their student.
Reading: Send home a vocabulary word list that parents can work on with their child or provide a link to a class-accessible Quizlet online. (Parent volunteers could be enlisted to set this up.) Provide a full year's lesson plan of what the student will be reading. Allow for substitutions if a book is considered controversial. Let the students bring the books home to re-read with their parent at night.
English Language Arts: Send home grammar homework nightly. Instruct parent to purchase a specific grammar book to keep at home to use as a reference based on pre-provided lesson plan. Have student write in journal every night to be checked by teacher once a week.
Science: Let eager parents help put together and/or provide materials for science experiments. Vocabulary should be a nightly homework project.
Social Studies: Parents can have their student watch travel or other educational videos to earn video game playing time.
Provide a complete overview of the most important concepts to be taught in your class for the year and the estimated order in which they will be taught in a booklet form. This will be used as a reference and review just before end-of-the-year testing. Offer up your favorite links and resources so that parents can work with their student independently.
Try to work with your fellow teachers to coordinate lessons so that they all complement each other.
No more guarding of information!