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Making curriculum links with homes and communities

5a Overview of Informing Links

Student teachers should know that:

Government strategy for schools’ links with parents was laid out the DfES 1997 White Paper Excellence in Schools and is to:

  • provide parents with information
  • give parents a voice
  • encourage parental partnerships with schools
Some of these links are now statutorily required in English schools and include:
  • the enhancement of parent governor roles;
  • parental involvement in inspection processes;
  • the provision of a school Self Evaluation Form;
  • the requirement for home-school agreements
  • the provision of information about the curriculum and school performance

Contexts for fulfilling these requirements include:

  • the communication of test and examination results
  • headteachers’ regular reports to governors
  • governors’ monitoring of standards
  • communication of pupil achievements to their parents at open evenings, in school reports and in references to employers

Student teachers on placements should:

contribute to the warm school environment essential to the success of parent school links through the management of their own language behaviours (in speech and writing) by, for example:

  • making clear that the school values the home’s literacy activities
  • knowing and commenting on the positive features of home and community to children, staff and community
  • presuming that the parent knows more about the child than the teacher
  • redefining the teacher learner relationship in family terms (e.g. using family-friendly language such as “children” rather than “pupils”)
  • ensure that parents’ interest in the curriculum is maintained

See 6c: Case Study (i) Good practice in supporting parents and http://www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/parentalinvolvement

In training: student teachers could: follow the links; role play in pairs or threes a parent-teacher interview where the teacher has to explain a new approach to an aspect of language teaching

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Contents

  1. Introduction and Rationale
    1. Introduction
    2. Rationale
  2. Core Principles about Language and Learning
  3. Key Issues
    1. Key Issues in Language and Learning
    2. Key Issues in Assessment and Evaluation
    3. Key Issues in Management
  4. Suiting Links to Purposes
  5. Links to Inform Parents and the Community
    1. Overview of Informing Links
    2. What Student Teachers might do to Inform Parents
  6. Links to Support Parents
    1. Overview of Supporting Links
    2. What Student Teachers might do to Support Parents
    3. Case Study (i): Supporting parental awareness of curriculum and methodology
    4. Developing parents’ own abilities through Family Learning courses
  7. Links to Make the Curriculum Reflective of Home and Community
    1. Overview of Reflective Links
    2. What Student Teachers might do to Make the Curriculum Reflective of Home and Community
    3. Case Study (ii): Reconstructing a community scenario
    4. Case Study (iii): Using texts from the community culture
  8. References
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