As the school year gets in full swing throughout the country, many teachers and literacy coaches have been talking about and preparing for parent/teacher night or the annual school Open House.   This night is a once-a-year chance to talk with families not only about what their children will learn during the school year, but also about the ways in which children acquire new skills and knowledge.  As teachers, we have so much experience watching a particular age group learn and grow. Parent/Teacher Night is a great time to share this knowledge with families.  

We believe that a child's disposition as a learner is far more important than  innate abilities, and we would share this with families.  If we had the chance to host a parent/teacher night this fall, we would not only spend time discussing the academic curriculum but also emphasize the ways in which we teach children  "how to learn."

Here we present the topics we would address  - the importance of practice, hard work, and motivation.  We've included the language we would use if we were talking directly to parents about our teaching.  We hope this article inspires you to think about what messages you want to share during parent/teacher night.


The Power of Practice and Working to Learn



The key factor separating geniuses from the merely accomplished is not a divine spark. It's not I.Q., a generally bad predictor of success, even in realms like chess. Instead, it's deliberate practice. Top performers spend more hours (many more hours) rigorously practicing their craft.
                                                                     David Brooks



We love this quote from a David Brooks article in the New York Times titled "Geniuses."   This quote reflects the heart of our classroom, and the importance of reading and writing daily for 30-40 minutes.  Some children in this class will need to work especially hard because it takes them longer to internalize certain skills and strategies.  There is no magic answer for teaching children who struggle in school, just as there aren't magic answers when we teach our children at home.

Children with learning differences need more teaching and more practice.    They need to read and write regularly and consistently with parents and teachers who monitor their work and continue to teach.  If you are a parent of a child who struggles in a particular area, please make it a priority in your home to find regular time to practice together.  

We also believe that our advanced learners need to understand the power of practice.   Sometimes children who learn to read and write effortlessly don't learn "how to learn something new." These children can come to believe that if they don't master a new skill instantly, it isn't worth learning.   When faced with a new challenge, some of our advanced learners will quickly state that they "don't like" this new activity and may even say that they are "bored" when trying an activity for the first time.  While these statements are sometimes accurate, they also hide the true issue -- the child doesn't understand how much practice is needed to truly learn a new skill or strategy, and is unsure of how to handle the feeling of being a "beginner."

Unfortunately, when kids don't learn how to practice and work at learning, they don't take risks inside or out of school.  Even the most gifted and talented people practice continually and work hard in areas in which they are successful.

In the book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell describes Bill Gates' childhood and the amount of time he spent learning to program.  "In one seven-month period in 1971, Gates and his cohorts ran up 1,575 hours of computer time on the ISI mainframe, which averages out to eight hours a day, seven days a week."

With this much practice, Bill Gates' success clearly isn't just about his innate abilities - practice matters. All of our learners need to find ways to practice and work hard.  As you can see from the schedule, students in this classroom have plenty of time to practice strategies.   Please review your children's schedules and think about how to make time for practice at home.

 Working Hard and Hard Work

We want you to understand our beliefs about how children learn and how those beliefs are translated into classroom practice. We'll use reading as an example.   During reader's workshop, your students are going to read  many texts that they can read easily and accurately because we are teaching students to think deeply.  In this class when it comes to reading, "thinking deeply" means analyzing an author's style across many texts, inferring the theme, and/or figuring out a character's feelings and motivations.

 In order to master these complex skills, your children need to read a wide variety of authors and different genres so that they meet many characters, become familiar with a variety of text structures, and understand different styles of writing.   If your child only reads a few thick texts throughout the year, they won't have a chance to practice these difficult thinking strategies.  For example, if a child reads one book for two months, they only have the opportunity to think about theme in one book. If they read a book a week, they have lots of opportunities to understand various authors' messages and writing styles.  The children will be working hard to understand and think deeply about these texts, although it might not appear that the reading itself is "hard work."

In this classroom children, will be reading many texts and your child will have the opportunity to choose a variety of texts to read each week.  However, we will be very careful to support children as they choose books and the majority of them will appear "easy." 

There is important research to support this decision of using easier texts to teach more complex literary and nonfiction skills and stratgies.  Richard Allington, the former president of the International Reading Association, notes the only ways to improve reading achievement are to:

•            Increase actual reading and writing activity
•            Select more appropriate literacy texts/tasks
•            Enhance useful strategy instruction

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/loveofreading.pdf

Thanks for coming to meet with us this evening!

We hope that by sharing our ideas for parent/teacher night, we will help you to think about your teaching priorities and different strategies for sharing ideas that really matter in helping kids learn.  If you are a teacher who is still planning a parent/teacher night we wish you a large audience with lots of smiling faces

Related Articles

·  Bilingual (English/Spanish) Books that Celebrate Language, Family and Culture ·  Expanding a School's "Reading Culture" ·  Sharing Data with Families at Parent/Teacher Conferences ·  Communicating with Families (CHOICE LITERACY CLUSTER) ·  How Do We Talk with Parents About What It Means to Be Challenged in Reading?