Parent Workshops

Essential Question: How can parental involvement play a larger role at home and have a significant impact on student achievement?

According to Henderson and Mapp (2002), parental involvement can be defined as:

• Engaging in learning activities at home that focus on reading and homework
• Starting deep conversation at home about student learning 
• Participation at the school including volunteering, conferencing, and attending school related functions (p. 22)

In efforts to increase parental involvement within the school, we will be designing and hosting workshops for parents. Parent workshops will take the place of curriculum nights this year. We will host two workshops  at the beginning of each quarter. Each grade level will present their quarterly literacy plan, the English language arts and reading standards they will address to during the nine weeks, and activities that can be easily implemented at home.

Preparation for these workshops should be completed during scheduled Professional Learning Communities. The Academically/Intellectually Gifted (AIG) teacher will be available to offer support for students who have tested into the AIG program and students who have not yet been identified.

(Winterberry Charter School, n.d.)

Will workshops work? Henderson and Mapp (2002) identified a study that focused on parental workshops and their impact in student achievement (p. 28). As a result of the study, students of parents who participated made improvement in reading and math, achievement levels were more apparent on the elementary level rather than the middle school level, and lower income families made little progress no matter how high of level parental involvement was. (Henderson & Mapp, 2002). According to Henderson (2011), "children from diverse backgrounds tend to do better when families and school staff collaborate to bridge the differences between home and school cultures" (p.8).


An example of the framework of a forty-five minute parent workshop:

• Greetings and Introductions (5 minutes)
• Introduction of Reading Strategy (5 minutes)
• Targeted English language arts and reading standards (5 minutes)
• Share activities that enhance the learning of standards (for example, fluency raps, core word flash cards, parts of speech mad-libs, etc.) (10 minutes)
• Parents practice activities with each other while teachers monitor (10 minutes)
• Final review and question session (10 minutes)