1. C.A.R.PHomework Workshop: A Bridge Between Leonardtown Elementary and the Community Leonardtown Elementary: Alexia, Julia, Ben, Connie and Philip
2. Justification of our Project S.I.P: SMCPS Master Goal #6: Increased communication, collaboration, and partnerships with all stakeholders. Observed at the school: some parents don’t sign their child’s planners every evening some children may lack homework support at home. At Back-To-School night, some parents expressed surprise at some resources that we use in the classroom.
3. Concern and Population Concern: Not all parents are fully included in their child’s education, homework time, and school culture. Population: as a pilot program, we are planning on directly targeting our own classroom parents. If this works, this evening will hopefully be put into place for the entire school
4. Our Strategy: Homework Workshop! Each of our classrooms, depending on our mentor teacher’s willingness to participate, would host a Homework Workshop. We would invite parents to come to the classroom in the evening. We would have a packet of homework strategies and external sources available.
5. Our Research Harris, A. and J. Goodall (2008). "Do parents know they matter? engaging all parents in learning." Educational Research 50(3): 277-289. "Schools need to make the shift to encouraging parental engagement in learning in the home through providing levels of guidance and support which enable such engagement to take place.“
6. Our Research Hein, D. L., & Wimer, S. L. (2007). Improving homework completion and motivation of middle school students through behavior modification, graphing, and parent communication. Online Submission. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/ Parents really seemed to appreciate the feedback provided. Parents claimed that there would be things that they would change about the intervention, but they would keep the constant communication.
7. Our Research Tam, V. C., & Chan, R. M. (2009). Parental involvement in primary children's homework in Hong Kong. School Community Journal, 19(2), 81-100. Children in the primary grades typically experience more academic success with quality parental involvement.
8. Research Questions To what extent does homework night develop the relationship between parents and the school? To what extent does homework night increase parents' awareness and knowledge of student homework? To what extent does homework night change the parents' views of their role in student homework?
11. Detailed Description of Strategy Each of our classrooms, depending on our mentor teacher’s willingness to participate, would host an individual Homework Workshop. We would invite parents to come to the classroom in the evening. We would have a packet of homework strategies and external sources available.
12. Detailed Description of Strategy During the Homework Workshop, we would discuss: Planners Where students keep their homework What kind of homework we assign Strategies that we use for specific subjects in the classroom. How to get extra work or resources at home.
15. Quantitative Data: Pre-Post Test Analysis One additional question that was added onto the Post-test was asking about the effectiveness of the evening. The mean of the rating on this question was a 3.83 out of 4, demonstrating that our evening was effective.
19. Comments All of the comments were related to homework 3 out of 5 parents wanted resources to help with homework 1 parent felt they should not intervene with homework 1 parent wants more homework sent home
20. Response after the Evening Parent Response E-mail Went home and discussed the evening with their child The child echoed many of the same things and strategies that we had discussed in the evening. Found the evening “insightful” Follow-up Remembered the discussion Found an article to support their side. Sent the article in with their child for the teacher the next day.
21. Possible Reasons for Low Attendance Rainy night Homework is clearly outlined in a daily agenda so parents may have felt they did not need additional information. Time of day due to parent work schedule, other children at home, and so on. Parents who have the less developed relationships with the school may be less compelled to come to an event at the school. Those who need support with their students' homework or feel thatthey should have a low role in homework are less likely to have found or seen the questionnaire because it was located with the homework. The letter sent home was signed only by interns, not teachers oradministration.
