Getting Involved with Your Child’s Education
Parents need to advocate for their children.
Parents who are involved with their child’s education provide a better chance of success.
This is about doing what is best for your child.
Provide Homework Help
One of the things that most parents need to do is help their children with homework. Regardless of your opinion on whether children should be given homework, most kids get sent home with it. Trying to get it done can be stressful, but it can often take much less time than you think. If you use the right techniques to encourage your child, you can help them to refresh what they’ve learned at school. You can also begin to teach them to work on their own so they will eventually be able to do their homework without much help from you.
Join the PTA
If your child’s school has a parent-teacher association, it can provide the perfect opportunity to get involved with their education. By joining the PTA, you can get the chance to talk about various issues in the school, including education, extra-curricular activities, and any resources or initiatives that you might find useful. Being a PTA member allows you to have a voice and ensure you have a channel to use for advocating for your child and other children too. It will help you to stay up to date with what’s happening and keep in touch with teachers.
Help with Class Projects
You could get involved with your child’s education by helping with class projects. Teachers are often appreciative of the help that parents and guardians can give them. You might help with researching and organizing class projects, ranging from how to make a class book to caring for a class pet or starting a garden for the class to look after. You could help by providing materials and resources that are needed for class projects. Or you might be able to volunteer your time to help out too.
Sign Up for Field Trips
Another way to volunteer your time could be to sign up for chaperoning on field trips. This is something that you might be able to do if you’re available during the day on weekdays. Before you sign up for anything like this, you might need to have a background check or meet some other requirements to ensure you can join in. This is to make sure that any parents or other non-teachers attending field trips are safe choices who can be responsible for other people’s children. Field trips can be a lot of fun and a chance to see what your child experiences when going on them.
Read Together
Reading together with your child is something that you can start to do from an early age. Even before your child learns to read, you can spend time reading together, and you can continue once they start school too. Take turns reading different books. This will allow your child the benefit of both being read to and reading on their own. Some children can be reluctant readers, but there are plenty of ways to encourage more reading. You might need to spend some time looking for books or other materials that your child enjoys.
Reinforce School Learning at Home
When you stay up to date with what your child is learning at school, you can do things to help reinforce what they’re learning at home. They might already have some homework to do, but you can also find other activities that help to apply what they’re learning in different ways. You might take them shopping to encourage them to use their numeracy skills or watch some history documentaries about the subject that they’re currently learning.
Stay in Contact with Teachers
Keeping in touch with teachers will ensure you know what your child is doing in school and how they’re doing. Of course, be aware that a fine line exists between being involved and pestering. Teachers don’t have time to stay in close touch with all of their students’ parents at all times. But they should be able to communicate with you appropriately about how your child is doing at school, whether any issues need to be resolved, and how you can help to support their education.
Provide Encouragement and Rewards
It’s important to reward and praise your child for doing well at school. You should also remember that doing well can look different for every child. For some it’s getting the highest grades possible and for others it’s maintaining consistent results. For others, it could be trying their hardest to make a small improvement. Praise your child when they do well and when they strive to improve or do their best. It’s good to acknowledge their efforts outside of school in addition to any rewards at school,
Help Your Child Take a Break
While you should be encouraging your child in their education, children also deserve a break from learning. Provide a break between schoolwork and homework or make sure there is a break between homework and dinner. The kids need some time to play or relax. Taking the pressure off and letting your child relax, play and spend time with friends will mean they’re ready for their next day at school. Plus, it allows them to work on other skills. For example, their social skills and other important things they might not always learn in the classroom.
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