Teachers Share Reading Tips at Parent University

Tene Medford was used to helping her first-grade son with his reading at home, but she didn’t always see the progress she was hoping for.

 

“I felt paralyzed,” she said. “I truly didn’t know what to do.”

 

That was until last month’s Parent University, a seminar led by Crossroads educators where parents learned the strategies used in their children’s classrooms to enhance reading proficiency.

 

The workshop, which about 80 first-grade and kindergarten parents attended last month, was designed to improve the continuity in children’s academic experiences in and out of school. Parents learned how to bolster reading instruction at home by incorporating the techniques that their children’s teachers use at school.

 

“Part of the philosophy here at Crossroads is, we really want to include home as much as we can so parents are there to support us and support the children and vice versa,” said first-grade teacher Eva Araujo, who helped plan the Parent University workshop. “We wanted parents to learn what we do here in the classroom so they can better support the reading program.”

 

Instead of telling students how to say a particular word, for example, teachers encourage them to figure it out on their own using playful tools. Students are asked to say the word with different vowel sounds or spread the word into smaller bits and then combine them.

 

“That makes the learning more meaningful,” Araujo said.

 

Parents left the workshop with helpful handouts as well as a bag of reading tools that included a discovery cube, a beach ball, a slinky and googly eyes. The seminar ended with a Q&A session.

 

“We didn’t want to just send books home without informing the parents,” said first-grade teacher Courtney O’Rourke, a fellow seminar coordinator. “When you’re doing read-alouds, you’re modeling to [students]. So when parents are modeling it at home, the kids see the same thing. The workshop brought it to life.”

 

In the future, Araujo and O’Rourke said, it’s possible that similar Parent University events will be held for other academic subjects or for parents in other grade levels. They received ample positive feedback after the seminar.

 

Tene, for one, said she’s seen significant progress in her first-grader’s reading abilities since attending the recent parent workshop.

 

“The guidance and tools shared at the parent training have sincerely helped me understand how my son is learning to read and why,” she said. “Now I feel more equipped to support him in becoming an avid reader.”

 

Eric Handler, another parent, said the event was invaluable.

 

“It helped me so we can effectively continue at home with what is being taught in the classroom,” he said. “And I must say, the techniques the students are learning are working well, because our first-grader loves reading now more than ever.”