Why this guide
- Parents and carers have an important role in supporting their child’s emerging reading and writing, but many parents struggle with this. For example, they may not know about the simple things they can do to support their child’s literacy development. Or, they may have had a bad experience themselves at school and so may lack the confidence to support their child’s learning.
- There are practical things that schools can do to help parents to, in turn, help their children’s learning. If schools do this, the evidence suggests that the benefits will show-up in the classroom.
- This guide is designed to help schools deliver this important task. Because of the importance of reading and writing success in the early grades for other areas of learning, this guide is focused on grades KG2-G3 and reading and writing in Arabic.
- Parents can be involved in their child’s school in a wide variety of ways. For example, they can volunteer to come to schools and assist teachers in the classrooms by performing the duties mentioned in the Parents Involvement Project (PIP) or be part of a parent teacher committee (PTC). For example, they may help with school maintenance or be involved in school decision making. In this Guide, though, you will find tools and resources for activities that have the most promise for improving student learning- and more specifically the learning of Arabic literacy in the elementary grades (KG-G3). Also note, that some of the contained tips might also work for later grades as well.
How to use this guide
This guide provides practical recommendations, strategies and tips for schools, principals and teachers to help them engage parents successfully. Alongside that, you can find some tools and resources that you can view, download and use with your own students’ parents (you should also feel free to modify them).
This guide also provides access to case studies from schools in Jordan who have enjoyed success from supporting and engaging parents to support their child’s literacy learning. All tools and resources are easily searched and navigated by using a keyword or category including topic and grade level.