Reading Rockets offers a wealth of reading strategies, lessons, and activities designed to help young children learn how to read and read better. Our reading resources assist parents, teachers, and other educators in working with struggling readers who require additional help in reading fundamentals and comprehension skills development.
Making Parents Partners
This free webcast will be available anytime online.
Karen L. Mapp, Susan Hall, and Tom Bowman discuss the effects of getting parents involved in their child's academic career.
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Program description
Research shows that getting parents involved pays off. When parents play a part in their child's academic career, students have better school attendance, make greater achievement gains, and have fewer behavior problems. What can your school do to make parents partners in the process of teaching their child to read?
Moderator
Delia Pompa is the moderator of this webcast. She is the Vice President of the Center for Community Educational Excellence, at the National Council of La Raza.
Presenters
Karen L. Mapp is President of the Institute for Responsive Education
Susan Hall is Project Director, Early Intervention Program for the Porter County Reading Foundation
Tom Bowmann is Director of Elementary Curriculum and Instruction for the Baltimore City Public School System
Sponsors
This teleconference was produced by Reading Rockets in partnership with the National Association of State Directors of Special Education (NASDSE), the National Education Association (NEA), the International Reading Association (IRA), and the National Association of Bilingual Education (NABE). Funding for this teleconference was provided by the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education.
Recommended readings
Articles and books by our presenters
Karen Mapp / Institute for Responsive Education
- Supporting Parents as Leaders (403K PDF)*
- Promising Practices that Promote Family Participation in Afterschool Programs: Another Link to Positive Educational Outcomes (101K PDF)*
Susan Hall
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- I've DIBEL'D, Now What?
by Susan Hall - Straight Talk About Reading
by Susan Hall and Louisa Moats - Parenting a Struggling Reader
by Susan Hall and Louisa Moats
Other readings
- Parents As Partners In Children's Learning
- Parent Partners: Using Parents to Enhance Education
- Parents as Partners in Education
Changemakers Journal, Spring 2001 - 10 Partnering Tips for a Strong School Community: Principals and Parents Working Together
- Parents and Teachers Working Together
- Involving parents of English learners in their children's schooling (542K PDF)*
Related web sites
- National Coalition for Parent Involvement in Education
- Institute for Responsive Education
- The Parent Institute
- PTO (Parent Teacher Organizations) Today
- The Alliance for Parent Involvement in Education
Discussion questions
- Discuss things your school does to encourage parents to be partners, and to help parents feel welcome at school. Describe specific events or efforts that have been particularly successful, and things that have been less successful. What contributes to successful collaboration between parents and the school?
- Share something that you learned from the webcast that was new to you. Then, talk about ways you see yourself using that information within your school setting.
- Define some of the barriers that may prevent parents from becoming more involved in the school. Then, brainstorm solutions to those barriers. Examples might include language differences and scheduling difficulties.
- Explain possible reasons why language-minority parents are deeply interested in their children's education. Then, describe reasons why their behaviors might not reflect their interests.
- What kinds of teacher training do you think might benefit the home-school partnership? Identify specific topics that would be useful.
The Reading Rockets Professional Development Webcast Series is a production of WETA. The Reading Rockets project is funded by the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs.
This program was produced by WETA/Reading Rockets, which is solely responsible for its content. The views expressed in the program are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views of WETA/Reading Rockets, our funders, or our partners.
* To view this file, you'll need a copy of Acrobat Reader. Most computers already have it installed, or you can download it now.
"I found the information and lesson plan activities in the English Language Learners section to be very helpful and look forward to sharing them with staff."
~ Linda T.
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Reading Rockets is a national multimedia project that offers research-based and best-practice information on teaching kids to read and helping those who struggle. It is an educational service of public television station WETA in Washington, D.C.
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