Research

How can we know if a child will succeed in school? One of the most accurate predictors of a student’s success is how involved his family is in his education.

As a parent, I know I have struggled with what the phrase “family involvement” in education really means. Does involved mean a helicopter parent or tiger parent or neither?

Fortunately, researchers have been asking the same question and have identified three characteristics of families that enable children to succeed:

• A home environment that encourages learning,
• High, yet reasonable, expectations for children’s achievement and futures, and
• Involvement in their children’s school and community.

As an educator, I need to understand why it is important to place building family involvement at the top of my priority list. As it turns out, what is good for the family is good for the classroom.

Students who have engaged parents:

• Achieve more regardless of socio-economic status or ethnic/racial background
• Score higher on tests and have higher grades
• Graduate at higher rates and enroll in post-secondary education at higher rates

This puts building family engagement in education at the top of the my agenda both personally and professionally.

Originally posted on DonnaLasinski.com.

How does your school rate on family engagement? What could they be doing better? Leave a comment below!

ThinkStretch is proud to introduce a new feature for Kindergarten through 2^nd grade students summer review books that encourages parents and children to discuss the weekly reading activities.  “Talk to Me!” offers simple topics in each weekly lesson that help parents to build reading comprehension skills in elementary school students. The activities reinforce vital reading concepts, such as retelling, predicting events, and strong vocabulary.

As a parent, it often feels like enough just to check off the reading log for 20 minutes everyday.  However, talking about what you and your child are reading together is just as important as the reading.  As a teacher, modeling for parents how to talk with their child about reading at home can be a challenge.

I reflected back on my pre-school and lower elementary experiences, in the classroom and at home, and realized that direct instructions often worked best for me and my kids.  I developed the “Talk to Me” feature initially for our Pre-K to K books to help build vocabulary between parent and child.  The “Talk to Me” feature is rooted in education research which demonstrates a strong relationship between an increased number of words spoken in the home, between parent and child, and a child’s vocabulary and reading performance.

The Pre-K heading to K ThinkStretch Summer Learning book was a tremendous success. Chuck Culpepper, Director of Curriculum and Assessment at West Bloomfield Hills Public Schools, encouraged me to take the next step and integrate the “Talk to Me” feature across the entire elementary series of ThinkStretch books.

Mr. Culpepper’s suggestion dovetailed nicely with the latest research from the National Center for Summer Learning.  The study highlights the importance of scaffolding comprehension skills with weekly reading over the summer to maintain reading proficiency.  In the home over the summer, parents are the educators who are responsible for “scaffolding comprehension skills.”  That is a tall order for many families.

Breaking down the key comprehension skills that the Common Core State Standards are emphasizing by grade level provided an outline for the “Talk to Me” feature.  From there, I spoke with parents, wrote several “Talk to Me” prompts and tested them with parents and kids.

Ranging from word recognition to story re-telling, the “Talk to Me” prompts are developmentally appropriate, fun for parent and child, and successfully help parents “scaffold comprehension.”  An example of a kindergarten “Talk to Me” feature from Week 2 is “Rhyming words are common in books for kindergartners.  Ask your child to find 5 pairs of rhyming words in a story.  Can you make up 5 pairs of rhyming words together?”

As the child advances in grade levels, the “Talk to Me” feature expands.  From Week 3 in the 2^nd heading to 3^rd grade ThinkStretch Summer Learning book, the “Talk to Me” prompt asks: “Ask your child to tell you what is going to happen next in the book.  Write down the prediction.  When the book is completed, look at what you wrote down and talk together about your prediction.”

I am excited to hear your feedback on the reactions of teachers, parents and administrators to the “Talk to Me” feature – let us know what you think by leaving us a comment.  ThinkStretch and I are excited to maintain an open dialogue to build our partnership in education.

A subtle turn of phrase – Learning to Read versus Reading to Learn – but a sea change in a child’s education. The transition from lower-el to upper-el marks a moment in education that can define a child’s future success, or so we have been told.

After 3^rd grade, it is has long been assumed that a child can read well enough to absorb new information without continued reading practice and instruction. This myth in education began to become ”commonplace” knowledge in the 1990s based on the work of a Harvard professor.

Many teachers took this as permission to abandon reading instruction for the upper elementary and focus on curriculum content. However, reading is a complicated a process that requires continued instruction as text and materials change.

Working on ThinkStretch, I am often questioned about the “best” grade in which to support summer learning and prevent summer learning loss. Some schools want to just focus on 2^nd graders heading to 3^rd grade so that they can make their 3^rd grade reading proficiency benchmark.

This is a narrow view from two perspectives. First, if the students have not maintained their reading skills over the summer from Kindergarten through 2^nd grade, they are likely already 6-9 months behind target, having been affected by summer learning loss already. Second, maintaining reading skills while in upper elementary is equally crucial, as the text students have to absorb becomes more nuanced and complex.

As parents and educators, we need to support our students’ need to read outside of school time, both during the school year and in the summer, to maintain and increase their reading skill. ThinkStretch is a summer learning program specially designed to support parents and educators aiming to do just that.

Originally posted on DonnaLasinski.com

Too much blanket praise, like “Good Job”, may actually backfire and hinder your child’s growth.  By consistently praising small acts on a consistent basis, you may be sending the message that your child needs your approval all the time.  It can also put your child on a pedestal making them are afraid to take risks and earn your disapproval.

The right amount of praise is a difficult balance, as too little praise often ends up making a child feel that they are not good enough or that you do not care.

So what is the solution?  Praise your child with sincere, genuine comments focused on the effort he is making, not the outcome of the effort.  Children who are praised specifically on effort work harder than those praised on the outcome.

Instead of “good job” when the homework is done, try “I saw how hard you worked to finish those tough math problems.  I am impressed with how you stuck with it!”  It is more work for you, but more meaningful to your child.

Ok, school may not be the same as being stuck indoors, but it can feel like that for kids. Kids need to balance brain work with physical play. After a long day at school, many kids need to get their energy out before sitting down to homework.

Several experimental studies show that school kids pay more attention to academics after they’ve had an unstructured break to play freely without adult direction.

Playtime does not need to be hours long, as researchers also found that playtime between 10-30 minutes is optimal between academic tasks.

So, break the mold!  Allow your children some time to play before sitting down to homework.

Sometimes parents need reading tips too.  Try these simple ideas to help your child become an interested reader.