Helping parents feel included provides the perfect school/home partnership we all know is key to student success.
However, COVID-19 has brought new challenges for sharing classroom happenings with parents. The moment we decided that no adults other than staff would be in our building, it became apparent that we needed a new classroom communication strategy. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but pictures alone cannot give parents the information they desperately seek about what their children are doing at school. What packs the biggest punch? Try this three-pronged approach to helping parents feel knowledgeable and included.
Exhibit: Use visual documentation to capture the most important moments during the day. Children in action. (Building, listening, playing, and exploring). Choose to share moments that capture emotion. You can say they are having fun outside, but seeing it is especially important. Parents want to see their children engaged with other children; they need to see that their child has friends.
Elevate: Use keywords to emphasize what the picture is showing. “When children explore, they build higher-level thinking skills. This provides the pathways for more complex reasoning.” “Playground time provides the perfect space for social and emotional growth. Taking turns, pretend play, and risk-taking are just a few examples of how important this time is for their overall growth.”
Educate: Provide context for the picture by explaining how it fits into the overall curriculum. “We are learning about ____. Today we went outside and measured... and inside we....” Describing how each piece of the day scaffolds in either topic or skill allows parents to feel like they are part of the learning. It also gives them ideas of how what they are doing at home contributes to their child’s learning.
This works best when teachers establish a consistent vocabulary of skills and development with parents. Here are common terms used to define developmentally appropriate learning:
- Social-emotional skills– building/regulating emotional responses, feels empathy, engages in play
- Cognitive skills -learning (academic foundations), thinking (infers information), problem-solving (poses questions and solutions)
- Language Development - express themselves, develop more complex vocabulary and sentence structure
- Physical Development - gross motor (building strength that allows greater movement and challenges), fine motor (pre-writing muscle development, smaller piece use and cutting)
- Multi sensory – using varied materials and engaging more than one sense
Jennie Rubin
Director of Early Childhood Education
Temple B’nai Or, Morristown, NJ
February 2021
