How do your teachers help their parents better understand the classroom curriculum? How in-depth do they go?
The screenshot above is from a newsletter our second-grade teachers recently emailed their parents. The newsletter also contains curriculum sections on language, math, specialist classes, and tips for supporting learning at home. I like how the teachers start with the big idea/concept for the unit, putting it front and center. Whether you are a PYP or a school that uses the Understanding by Design approach to curriculum development, helping students learn concepts is where we start our unit design process.
I also like how the teachers guide the parents to better understand our PYP curriculum by building their understanding of how concepts, transdisciplinary skills, and actions drive our students’ learning. The units of inquiry, in this case, the Character Connections unit, connect portions of the reading, writing, social studies, science, math, and language studies curricula into each unit. The students pursue and build their understanding around teacher-provided questions and ones that they also come up with.
We know that parents have their school experiences to draw from as they develop their expectations for what should happen in their child’s classroom. When we go beyond the basics of teaching reading, writing, etc., to teach concepts, inquiry, and transdisciplinary skills, sometimes parents are at a loss to understand what is happening in the curriculum.
This makes it doubly important to have parent coffees. These rich classroom websites include videos of learning activities and other opportunities in detailed newsletters to teach parents about the complexities and rewards of going beyond what they perhaps experienced in their elementary education.