Ethics = Tick!

Yesterday I received confirmation that my Ethics Proposal had been approved.

Next week I will send out the permission slips to the children in my class and invite participants. All children in my class will actually be involved in the project but parent (and student) permission will enable me to use their information for the project.

Parents who agree to participate will be asked to fill in a questionnaire which will ask the following questions:

1. How often do you speak to your child’s teacher?
2. How often do you visit your child’s classroom or help on a trip?
3. What are the difficulties or barriers that prevent you from visiting or helping more often?
4. How easy do you find it to get involved with the school activities and your child’s learning?
5. Please comment on the amount and type of support your give your child with home learning
6. Do you feel you have enough information from the school about your child’s learning? (for example, what your child is currently learning, what the next steps are for them and how you could help at home?)
7. What types of ‘learning’ activities does your family participate in outside of school hours?
8. What could the teachers at school, or the school in general do to encourage the involvement of parents who find it difficult to become involved?

These questions have all arisen as "issues" from my literature review. I think that question numbers 3, 4 and 8 really are key. One of the issues that frequently arose in the literature (eg McCarthey, 1999; Epstein, 2001; Harris & Goodall, 2007; Deslandes, 2006) was whether, rather than parents being hard to reach, it is in fact schools and teachers that are hard to reach. Of course this is a challenging thought for teachers but it is definitely worth considering how approachable we make ourselves.

Each week we will use the Flip video to record children reading their 'best' piece of writing which will be uploaded to the blog. The children will begin their video with telling their audience what their current learning intention is. Parents will be invited to comment on the children's writing. By using the video, I hope to eliminate the comments about spelling and handwriting! My first task will be to meet with parents and demonstrate how to give feedback about writing and the sorts of features that the children are learning about. I anticipate that our blog will become a resource for parents to use as well (with links to examples of language features etc).

I will need to make time for the children to read the comments their parents have written at school (much as we should make time for children to read our feedback in books also). I will be looking to see whether the increased engagement from parents has any impact on the children's achievement in writing.

However writing is really only the vehicle here. The really interesting test will be whether the use of the blog engages parents in their child's learning who are otherwise not engaged. Do we "see" parents in this forum who are not otherwise present at school? And of course, do parents feel confident to write in this forum? We will not know whether parents who do not comment will still view their child and give them feedback face to face.

I would be really interested to hear from experienced classroom bloggers what their experiences of this are.