How do you communicate progress and achievement to parents?

Clear expectations of learners and obligations of parents should be communicated quite early to enable their mental preparation and goal setting for the school year. Through the students' weekly and monthly report of assessment, progress of student can be communicated to the parents through any convenient means, email, text, phone calls and so on.

My learnings from early years education is to baseline child's interest area or behaviour attributes in the beginning of the session and ask facilitator to room to observe that specific area where improvement is visible and record it in kids' learning pathways. Use that learning pathways to discuss with parents on their children's progress.

Some of the most fruitful conversations I have had are through an introductory getting to know you email, followed by touching base 4-5 weeks into a term once the dust has settled and the ‘honeymoon period’ is over. With some baseline assessments completed and formative assessments well underway, it is a good chance to share children’s initial strengths, and potential areas of pastoral and academic concern.

Agreed. Educators need to be flexible and willing to go an extra mile to accommodate parents' preferences. Some parents may not speak English, so we use Lions Bridge translation services to help us communicate with parents in any language.

Completely agree. As an educator we must be aware of parent's preference of communication channel. Regardless of the channel, I think format of communication is very important. For play school parents, they would want to see some video clips and artefacts created by their children.

A face to face meeting is an important opportunity to hear from parents how they feel children are settling in and if they have any concerns. Once children become familiar with friends, behaviour reminders are essential both in class and at home. A short explanation by the teacher, with the added advantage of facial expression and tone, allow for effective teacher modeling of positive ‘growth mindset’ or ‘self-regulatory’ language used in the classroom. This can be useful guidance, to continue building on the child’s love of learning at home.

A quick email to parents to highlight a child’s particular achievement on any given day, sets the tone for future conversations, whether in person or online. The cyclical effect of sharing positive feedback with parents, lends itself to being passed on to children which helps children to build self-confidence and boost their interest in the subject. I personally tend not to call for positive feedback, as I know how my heart jumps when I see my children’s school number - worse still if I have missed the call!

I am an Infant Educator and I share milestone checklists and guides with caregivers so that they are empowered to be an integral part of their child's development. During my sessions, I discuss with parents what their child is accomplishing, what their strengths are and what I plan to help the child with to make progress. At the beginning of each session, I check in with parents about anything new their child has done since our last session, and I acknowledge both the child's and the parents' success. I am careful in my wording when I mention that I have not seen the child do/say something during our 45 minutes together, while softening that with "what have you seen him say/do during your daily routines?"

Focusing on accomplishments gives students and educators a place to build from. When I worked with elementary students on building literacy skills we assessed what they knew and that was our starting point. We set realistic goals and we provided support to help students achieve their goals. Frequent check-ins allowed students to monitor their progress and adjust their goals as needed. Students and educators can share these accomplishments with children's supporters (parents/caregivers) and invite them to build off these strengths while the student is not in school.

We had students actively participate in creating portfolios to share with supporters in conferences. Before the conferences students would meet with teachers to prepare what they wanted to present in the conference and then students led the conferences. It is important for students' voices to be most dominant in these settings so they can feel they own their education.

In my honest opinion, no relationship is one-way street. Whether it's client - vendor, husband-wife, parents-children. In case of parent-teacher , this holds good as much as in any other relationship. Transparency in communication is the key to build, nurture and sustain any relationship. I have seen this in primary and middle years school, sometimes parents expect a lot from teachers. I think teachers must spend time with parents to understand the expectations from each other and create a healthy dialogue to discuss what's working and what's not. What support they would need from parents and what can they provide from school to support children's future. Collaboration is the key and it comes with bi-directional trust.

We often started the year with, "Tell us about your child," and we invited supporters to do this in writing, a collage, or whatever medium felt right to them. We encouraged them to focus on the positive aspects of their child. Supporters could send these pieces in with their student and then we thoughtfully responded so they knew we really took in what they expressed. Throughout the year we built off these positive observations and added to them, continuing the communication with our students' supporters.

This, I will call, is cadence. Every professional conduct requires a cadence and rigor. Having daily, weekly sync-ups or sometimes async conversations (with a proper expectation and agreement of response turn around time) help with good follow through and goes a long way in building long term relationships.

Communicate, Communicate and Communicate! A happy parent community leads to a healthy school community! I believe one of the best thing to do is to communicate with parents every now and then about their child's performance whether its academics or behaviour. It helps the educators/school and parents to closely monitor their children and also lets the teachers to plan interventions as and when required. Timely interventions require proper communication and effective coordination between school and parents for achieving all the learning outcomes for students in particular. If communication and interventions are in place, it helps in gaining insights for planning the next steps in teaching and learning leading to school's overall progress!