teach talk: working with parents to raise attainment
DESCRIPTION
Parental engagement is a great way to raise attainment in schools. Technological advances can help facilitate this relationship. Hear how primary and secondary schools effectively communicate with parents, and how they help parents in supporting their children at home.TRANSCRIPT
Working with parents to raise attainment
Paget HighRichard Blaize, Head of ICT
Portway Infant SchoolKaty Lynas, Teacher
Rosemary Harper, Teacher
St Clement Danes SchoolTom Phillips, Network Manager
Teach Talks
Richard Blaize@richardblaize
School Background
• Approx. 1000 pupils and 60 staff• Average Daily Unique Log Ons 1300• Christmas Day 2012 over 200 log ons
Richard Blaize @richardblaize
• Revision website accessible to pupils, staff and parents
• The website has its own URL allowing for access without going through Frog
Richard Blaize @richardblaize
• Examination Timetable• Start times, Examination title, Exam board,
Duration and Room
Richard Blaize @richardblaize
• All subjects have their own page• Each page is built to allow departments to
add/remove content as and when• Overall design and navigation remains intact
Richard Blaize @richardblaize
Richard Blaize @richardblaize
Richard Blaize @richardblaize
Richard Blaize @richardblaize
• Using Twitter to publicise the revision website and each individual examination
• Tweets give the examination information the day before the exam and the day of the exam
Richard Blaize @richardblaize
• Parents and pupils use Twitter to ask messages about examinations and request material to appear on the revision website
Richard Blaize @richardblaize
Richard Blaize @richardblaize
I Am Learning
Richard Blaize @richardblaize
• ‘I Am Learning’ has been added to the revision website during the year
• Using ‘I Am Learning’ Year 11 have revised for almost 700 hours
Richard Blaize @richardblaize
Richard Blaize @richardblaize
Hints, Tips and Advice
Richard Blaize @richardblaize
• Advertise, advertise, advertise – letters, parents evenings, newsletter, school WWW
• Give the website its own URL• Allow staff to manage content and advise on
use• Recommend the use of PDF documents• When tweeting avoid using terms like ‘today’
or ‘tomorrow’ be specific with the tweets• If you receive a tweet reply to it ASAP• Retweet examinations from other accounts
Richard Blaize @richardblaize
Working with parents to raise attainment
Portway Infant School, Derby.
Background info
• Portway Infant School, Derby• 235 children on roll• _ without internet access / computer at home.
Engaging parents – non technological techniques
• Infant school relies on the engagement of parents
• Take home Tuesday• Coffee mornings• Information and curriculum meetings• Parents evenings and reports• Ten minute ‘welcome’ time in the classroom
each morning.
Engaging parents – technological techniques
• Website, more for prospective parents • Text messaging service• Learning platform – main platform for
communication with parents, relevant information for parents within class sites amongst the main school information forum.
• Message to teacher, emails.
Learning from the past; Sharepoint
Parents Staff
Children can’t be independent Unreliable
Too much time Too much time
I am going to miss important information Not easy to upload - multiple docs
Too many clicks An extra job, parents still need paper
Unreliable – down at weekend Corporate site
Not like sites children want to use Not infant friendly – not how we teach
Where can I get help? Used folder structure beyond belief!
What we were looking for;FROG
Essential Desirable
Infant friendly – pictures, videos and more pictures. WOW factor
Reduce page clicks
Potential for independence Easy access to passwords
Easy to get around – parents and children Alternative to folders
Reliable
Key advice – what the staff think
• (Hopefully little video clips to go here!)
Implementation – how it works for us
• Staff confidence first!• Staff meetings and
training• Team work• Support• Amend policy • Chocolate bribes!
• Children and parents use same username
• Raise enthusiasm within classroom
• Incite curiosity – and introduce bribes (teddy)
• Sustain interest (school and home)
• Offer support
Raising attainment – continuing learning at home
• (Screen shots to be moved into a few slides to show activities to continue learning at home and for parents support – ensuring we all support children in the same way with lit and maths for example.)
• 4 screen shots
Frog Conference 2013
St Clement Danes School
Working with parents to raise attainment
Frog at St Clement Danes
• Frog installed 2009
• Used well throughout the school
• Developing Parental Portal
• Looking to move towards Frog OS
Parental Portal – Benefits and Drawbacks
• Benefits– Parents feel more included– Information is readily available to parents– Cut down on admin work– Staff encourage to promote good behaviour/achievements
• Drawbacks– Data needs to be correct, up to date and stay up to date– Additional work load?
Parental Portal – Engaging parents• What would parents want to see?– Childs information:
• Assessment – Achievements• Timetable• Attendance• Reports• Frog Activity
– School information:• What’s happening/events• Ways to contact the school – careful!
Parental portal – Focus
• Assessment / Attendance– MIS database – Sims.net– Aspects– Subjects– Information to display – Graphs, Tables, IF
statements for key stages
Parental portal - Journey• Portal template supplied by Frog.• Bulk of time was spent on this. Check MIS
Aspects and tidy MIS system.• Frog Extractor setup but no data pulled over yet.• Data pulled across, we checked how it was
displayed and configured our Frog template.• Displayed data that was confusing was removed.• IF statements setup to segment Key stage data.
• Staff parents were given logon details.• Bugs and Feedback was received and
adjustments made.
Parental portal template
Check and Update MIS
Extract and Interpret Data
Configure and Simplify Data
Test with Staff parents
Parental portal – Next steps
• We plan to release the portal to a single year group for a full academic year to test how well it is received.
• Feedback from this will determine the next step.
• Our overall aim is to give all students parents the ability to use the parental portal over the next few academic years.
Release to Single Year
group
Stagger full release
Parental Portal – Raising Attainment
• Parents can see information about their child quicker and in more detail. Information is not lost in transit or mislaid.
• Parents can then address issues and identify areas where their pupils at the school can improve.
• Parents can track progress over previous months or years quickly and spot trends that might otherwise not be apparent.
• A lot of the work a parent would have to do in order to get a clear overview of how a student is doing is done within the parental portal.
Any questions?
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