Templates for schools to support communication with families - Classroom teacher term overviews
Dear Principals
As you would be aware when parents and carers engage with their children’s learning, particularly out of school, attendance increases, behaviour in school improves, homework return rates go up and, overall, children’s achievement tends to improve.
As educators, you also know that learning can take place in all kinds of environments and that when parents nurture a positive attitude towards learning in all its forms, it builds children’s confidence and engagement with the world around them.
And yet often parents report they often feel they don’t know how to best support their children’s development in a way that complements the learning that takes place in class and, also often underestimate the value of ‘every day everywhere learning.’
As such, to help schools promote the importance of the school-family partnership approach to learning, a template has been developed for classroom teachers to populate and share with their student’s parents.
The template is designed to not only inform parents and carers of learning that will be taking place in the classroom that term but importantly, to also give them ideas on how they can support this learning at home.
Finally, by implementing a single template across the school it promotes consistency, which can help manage parents’ expectations about what communication they will receive from teachers across the span of the school.
If your school already distributes similar communications, please feel free to continue this tradition- while also considering the value of adding in a section that provides parents with information on how they can support their children’s learning at home in an age-appropriate way.
Please be advised that:
- The template is attached to this edition of Connect, and available to staff at any time on the Family Engagement tile on SharePoint page (School Improvement > Family Engagement > Templates). The template is designed to be customised by each school community, and classroom teacher. Parts that are highlighted MUST be customised.
- While it is not mandatory for schools to implement the Classroom Term Overview, you are encouraged to consider its use as valuable tool in building communication and relationship with families (it may also save your school administration team a few calls and emails)!
- This template is more geared towards a primary school audience- if you have suggestions for the development of a similar resource geared towards the high school setting, I will welcome hearing from you!
- Finally, if there are other templates you would like to see developed to assist your staff to build relationships with parents and carers, please don’t hesitate to contact me.
Kind regards,
Lizzie Watkin
Professional Officer- Family Engagement