Getting Involved In Your Child's Education
Dear parents and family members,
Studies have indicated that children whose parents and/or other significant adults share in their formal education tend to do better in school. Some benefits that have been identified that measure parental involvement in education include:
- Higher grades and test scores
- Long term academic achievement
- Positive attitudes and behavior
- More successful programs
- More effective schools
Displaying Your Child's Work at Home
Your child has been taking his/her finished schoolwork home. Please look at the school work with your child and together choose pieces to put on display in your home.
Displaying your child’s schoolwork at home sends strong messages to your child:
- ‘Your work is valuable.’
- ‘You are creative/smart/hardworking.’
- ‘Work well done is beautiful.’
Praising and admiring your child’s schoolwork will help your child develop a sense of pride in his/her work. It will:
- promote in your child the joy of a job well done.
- promote in your child the feeling of satisfaction when looking at thoughtfully done work.
- develop a foundation for a strong work ethic in your child.
Reading At Home With Your Child
Please show your children that reading is an important and enjoyable thing to do. When you read to them, they learn a lot more than what is happening in the story. They absorb how to hold and handle a book, how to turn the pages and how a story can be told. Their curiosity in the words and pictures is the first step towards reading. They enjoy guessing what will happen next, and what the pictures will show. They find it fun to anticipate the words and to join in with sections that are repeated.
Here are some tips on how to read to your children:
- Make sure you have a quite time and place, with no distractions.
- Be comfortable; promote a feeling of closeness.
- Try to read everyday. Ten minutes a day is better than an hour once a month and they will look forward to your shared reading times.
- Read slowly in a relaxed voice, using as much expression as you can.
- Draw their attention to words that are repeated frequently, and encourage them to join in.
- Ask questions- What do you think will happen next? Why do you think that happened? Give plenty of time for response.
- Read lots of different kinds of books- wordless books, pop-up books, nursery rhyme books, alphabet books, fiction and non-fiction.
- Help your children explore pictures in books and to recognize and label objects from their own experiences.
- Read favorite stories over and over again.
Sharing books with your children everyday can become a very happy habit. It will enable them to develop language experience and it will set them on course for learning how to read. You'll probably enjoy it yourself, too!
Yours sincerely,
Ms. Diana