Zara’s mum approaches her daughter’s reception teacher one Monday morning, looking flustered and worn out.
“I’m really sorry, Miss. Buckley, she hasn’t practised her sounds this weekend and she’s just not interested in that book you sent home because there’s no words in it.
I’ve tried my best to encourage her…I just don’t know how you teachers do it.”
Zara’s mum is typical of many parents and carers. She wants to support her child’s learning but doesn’t always know how.
How can we support parents like Zara’s mum?
Many parents are keen to get involved with their child’s learning, but may simply not know how. Some parents may lack the skills and confidence to support their child’s engagement in learning opportunities. Perhaps others are afraid to ‘get involved’ in case they ‘get it wrong’?
Part of our role as early years educators and class teachers might be to reassure parents and to help them understand the importance of their contributions.
To develop this further, we must offer specific suggestions that feel feasible and achievable.
For example, encouraging caregivers to simply talk with their child and engage in meaningful interactions, will not only support the development of their child’s communication and language skills, but also strengthen relationships between parent and child.
Recommendation 2 of EEF’s Working with parents to support children’s learning guidance report suggests that educators provide practical strategies to support learning at home:
- For young children, promoting shared book reading should be a central component of any parental engagement approach. Home learning activities, such as playing with letters and numbers, are also linked to improved outcomes.
Encouraging parents to simply spend time exploring a book with their child, discussing its content and pictures, helps to lay the foundations for future literacy learning.
- Tips, support, and resources can make home activities more effective — for example, where they prompt longer and more frequent conversations during book reading.
Inviting parents and carers into the setting so that educators can model effective ways of engaging in books, rhymes and conversation can be a valuable practice, allowing caregivers to gain insight of practical, doable ways of participating in their child’s learning.
Three things you could do…
1. Create connections through clear communication. Talk to parents and carers about what support they would find helpful. Consider how and when sessions will be delivered, to accommodate those parents in most need of support.
2. Model shared reading practices to parents and carers. See recommendation 5 of Preparing for Literacy- improving communication, language and literacy in the early years guidance report for more detail.
3. Monitor and regularly review approaches to engage parents and carers. What is working well? Where can improvements and changes be made?
How this could contribute to your Pupil Premium strategy
Our new updated Guide to Using Pupil Premium will support you in the development of your Pupil Premium strategy. When using the tiered approach model and drawing on ‘wider strategies’ we can consider the value of engaging with parents and carers.
Further reading:
Tackling disadvantage in the early years (parliament.uk)
You might be interested in this EEF blog: Making Use of TRUST talk and associated tools to support reading at home.