Educational Reflections (formerly Rumblings from 52): Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

I received this note from my daughter's Parent Council for the group People for Education:

Here is an interesting article/research on “How parents can help their children succeed at school” put out by People for Education.

http://www.peopleforeducation.ca/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/People-for-Education-Doing-What-Matters-Most-how-parents-can-help-their-children-succeed-at-school-20111.pdf?utm_source=Bulletin+and+Updates&utm_campaign=7ebba83989-September_2011_Bulletin9_23_2011&utm_medium=email

An example of some of the info included is:

More important than limiting TV time, or even monitoring homework, there are four things that lead the pack when it comes to making a difference:

1. Parents having high (but reasonable) expectations of their children

2. Parents talking with their children, particularly about school

3. Parents helping their children develop positive attitudes towards learning and strong work habits

4. Parents reading to or with their children

As the group continues to learn about the fundamentals of building complete sentences, we are doing an Art activity which involves the students making a collage using words and letters from old copies of the newspaper. Here are a few examples of the assignment in progress:

We continued to work on themes related to our year focus on resiliency. Today's journal question asked them to describe a situation when they were brave. The word "describe" is a key word used in the EQAO assessment. While the students are not doing this assessment, I believe that being able to answer a question with details and precision is important. I will post a photo of the question (with some scaffolding included) and a sample response I did to model for the class.

In the afternoon, we had our first "official" session of Reading Buddies with the JK/SK class of Mrs. Bennett. While a few groups will need cues on how to interact with the little ones, this, I can tell, will be a fabulous learning opportunity for everyone. Here are some shots of the sharing from this afternoon.