3 key questions to get the most out of parents' evening
You wait all term to find out how your child is doing at school (what do they actually get up to all day?). Although you catch a glimpse of the teacher most days, getting to talk to one-to-one is rare, even more so if you do not drop off or collect. Parent’s evening is that small window of opportunity.
At my daughter’s school, signing up for a slot on parents evening resembles the Hunger Games (may the odds be ever in your favour!) All the signup sheets are laid out in the hall at morning drop off and parents scavenge to get the best possible slot. If you don’t drop your kid off on that particular day, you have to beg a favour and hope a friend will sign up for you. Worse still, if you have children in more than one class you have to fight through the frenzied crowd to two separate tables and hope that you can get too appointment times reasonably close to one another.
Inevitably on parent’s evening itself things are running late and you spend a long time waiting for your turn. I sometimes wonder in that wait if I am the only one that feels like a schoolgirl waiting outside the headteacher’s office to face the music! Although you have high hopes for all you will find out about how your child is doing, you find yourself leaving having not found out as much as you’d hoped.
Usually you have just ten minutes for your appointment. If you’re lucky, the teacher is well prepared, and you find out lots of useful things about your child’s education. Often, we land up spending the time on chit chat or minor details. Here is a little guide to structuring your questions to find out as much as you can and feel like things are moving forward.
Essentially there are three important parts to a parents’ evening conversation.
1. How much progress is your child making?
Chatting about how much progress your child has made that term is important. Even if your child is learning at a different level to their peers the key issue will be whether their learning is moving in the right direction at reasonable pace.
2. What are their barriers to learning?
Essentially what things are getting in the way of their learning. Perhaps there is a subject they are finding really difficult, or there is a learning behaviour they need to develop to support their learning (attention, listening, perseverance). Sometimes mixing with the other children and making friends is tricky. Recognising that a child is struggling can be the easy part, analysing what specifically is stopping them from moving forward is the crux.
3. What can be done to help them work around this barrier?
This is probably the most important part of the meeting. Coming up with a game plan for how the teacher and parents are going to support the child in overcoming whatever is getting in the way of learning. Sometimes the barrier is something beyond our control, change of staff for example. Even when this is the case, finding practical tools to help your child with managing this change will make a difference to their ability to engage in learning.
By covering all three aspects you will leave the meeting feeling positive. Even if things haven’t been going well for your child, if you are able to work together to find one or two practical steps to move forward then you will have the sense that things are going in the right direction.
To get more of our top tips and tools join our Confident Communicators Group (supporting development for 2 – 5 year olds).
The group is open to parents/ carers/ grandparents and early years practitioners.
Do come along and join us!
