The Importance of Parents and Caregivers to the Educative Process of their Child
According to How To Have A Successful Parent / Teacher Conference (2010), "communication with parents or guardians is an essential for students' growth and learning". The school cannot be perceived as the only system that is responsible for their students’ learning. Parents share this responsibility with schools, because they are essentially the first people to educate their children with their basic life skills such as how to play, eat, talk, etc. Home life and what students do during this time is vital to their educational progress even though their teacher is not directly teaching them. It is their parent’s responsibility to ensure their children are using their time efficiently. "It is the school’s responsibility to provide parents with an opportunity to discuss their children’s progress and voice any concerns" (Ewing et al, 2003, p. 285). This is particularly important to communicate with the parents about their child's educational progress and any issues that may be occurring to try to correct them. "It is important to involve parents or guardians as partners in the educational process of all students. Even when it is difficult to get parents to cooperate with this process, it is up to teachers to find ways to make the connections needed to engage parents or a child's caregiver. A positive, proactive, and persistent attitude will eventually work with caregivers who are absent in the educational process of their children" (Ewing et al, 2003, p. 285).
Achievement of Goals Stated in Blog 1
The goals I had set for this practicum were:
• Implement ICT and different teaching strategies to cater for the learning needs of all my students within my classroom, to make the content interesting and engaging. (4.1.5 Use a range of teaching strategies and resources including ICT and other technologies to foster interest and support learning.)
I believe I successfully achieved this learning goal to the best of my ability as I used ICT within the classroom most lessons. I also altered tasks for different students because of their learning abilities and needs. I believe the content was made interesting through a variety of tasks because when I was revising with the students for their end of topic exam I could say “remember when we did this….” That addresses this sub topic and most students could refer back to the tasks.
• To have a diverse range of lesson activities and classroom teaching strategies to encourage learning of all students who have different approaches to learning. Therefore I can have different options for students depending on their individual way of learning, but the completion of the tasks will show similar outcomes and understandings of content. (2.1.3 Demonstrate knowledge of students’ different approaches to learning.)
I believe I could have worked harder to achieve this goal fully. There was some differentiation in task activities but I found it very difficult and time consuming to create different tasks according to their approaches to each task. Instead I made a variety of tasks throughout the unit that would cater to each learning style of students within the classroom.
• Make a conscious effort to supply my students with the feedback they need to improve their learning and understanding of content. (3.1.7 Give helpful and timely oral and written feedback to students.)
I believe I achieved this learning goal as a provided my students with written and oral feedback about assessment tasks as well as work handed up for marking. I also wrote extra notes on their work as clues to find the correct answer if students didn’t quite grasp the correct answer.
• To create a safe learning environment for all students where they can feel welcome, feel like they belong, have equal abilities and rights to learn and encourage each other to learn regardless of their individual differences. (5.1.2 Establish supportive learning environments where students feel safe to risk full participation.)
With the diverse range of students allocated to each class I believe I created a safe learning environment for all of my students. I treated all students equally and encouraged all students to participate in class activities.
At the conclusion of the lecture and therefore University on the 29th of September, Wendy Moran gave us a short story about teaching. I have found a video version of it below, which is inspiring to all teachers.
-----------, (2010), "How To Have A Successful Parent / Teacher Conference", ©1999 - 2010 Teachnology Inc, retrieved on: 03/0/2010, from: http://www.teach-nology.com/tutorials/teaching/ptconference/
Ewing, R., Groundwater-Smith, S., & Le Cornu, R. (2003). "Teaching challenges and dilemmas", Victoria: Nelson Australia Pty Limited.
