Sunday, November 13, 2011

Reading Tips for Parents

My first parent-teacher conference night was a success! I did have a no-show and two that showed up an hour late wanting to meet while I was meeting with other parents, but other than that, everything went smoothly! The more I see the parents and know how much they are actually willing to help, the more I appreciate them.

One thing I did notice was that many of my parents are eager to learn ways that they can help their child at home in areas that they are struggling in (mainly reading for my students). I was asked for a sort of “cheat sheet” by a couple of parents and decided to look and see if there were any online before I actually sat down to make one from scratch.

I managed to find two that I liked enough to use—one for comprehension for both my higher and lower readers and one on phonemic awareness for my lower readers. They both have great tips to help children read better and I wanted to share them with anyone else that needs something similar!

Here they are:
Comprehension Parent

Phonemic Awareness Parent

Friday, November 4, 2011

Parent Teacher Conferences--Oh My!

Whew! It has been a busy couple of weeks! I like to try to do this on the weekends but my weekends have been almost as busy as my weekdays lately that I couldn't even think about writing.

Our first nine weeks ended last week and I can't believe it went by so fast! Report cards are already due on Monday. This ending has me reflecting on how I've been doing as well as how the kids have been doing. I could list all the things I feel I could improve on (I had to drive 2 hours last night on the interstate and I ended up having a long “discussion” with myself on needing to do a better job at work—but that's a whole separate entry) but I won't do that today.

Since Parent-Teacher Conferences are just around the corner, I wanted to share what I am going to do. I am going to send home a form this week that the parent should fill out and return to me. This form will have them list what they believe their student's strengths and needs are as well as some things that they would like to discuss. This will help me to plan ahead of time how I want the discussion to go. Our conferences are only 15 minutes long so I am trying to maximize time with each parent.

I will also have a form that will be filled out by myself ahead of time that will have the student's scores on important assessments, their strengths and needs, and what I would like to mention to the parents (such as behavior problems that the parent may not be aware of).

I have searched online for some cute forms (I could always make my own... but there are much more creative people than I am out there) and have found a couple that I am going to tweak slightly. Side note—I found some great ones on Pintrest... I just became a member last night (thanks Maggie!) and I am officially obsessed. If you would like an invitation to Pintrest, let me know!

My hope is that these conferences will go smoothly and that there will be no yelling involved. Most of my parents are coming out and I haven't decided yet if that is a good or a bad thing!