Parental Involvement
We do encourage parents to become fully involved in their children’s learning, and there are many things you can do!
We hold workshops for parents and open days / information evenings—please do come along and join in, this really does encourage your children to learn as well!
Do encourage your child to come to school—light coughs and cold, minor injuries etc are no reason to stay away!
Do try to help with homework—children need lots of encouragement. Encourage your child to read at home over and above what is expected by the school. Encourage them to use the library and the internet, if you have it, to carry out extra research activities about their current topic. If you can, set aside a quiet place for homework to be done, and give a definite time—no television at this time!!
Encourage early bedtimes, again with no television—a tired child does not learn well at all!
Join the local library and take your child every week, for both story books and information books.
Family Learning
We do try to encourage parents to come along to family learning sessions. These may start off with a joint parents and child session, such as the Technology Challenge Evening. Following this, parents can sign up for the family learning sessions. These are held once a week after school for six weeks. The aim of these sessions is to help parents understand the school curriculum better, so that they can then help their children more at home. Parents are taught how we teach aspects in Literacy and Numeracy, as well as other parts of the curriculum. Please express an interest to the school—currently, take up is so bad that last year
we had to cancel the sessions we booked. Family learning sessions are taken by an experienced adult tutor.
Parent Group
There is a Staff and Parent group at Adwick Park, but it is badly in need of more people to become active participants. The Staff and Parent Group helps with fundraising for the school, among other things, and at the moment we have very few activities going on, because so few people are involved in the group.
Fundraising is very important—we use the money to add to the curriculum in many different ways. One of the most important things we raise funds for is to help out with the cost of trips—these can be expensive, and we always try to subsidise these a little bit—but soon we will not be able to do this, as funds are
getting very low.
Could you become involved? A meeting is held once a term, and then there are the fundraising activities to organise, but the commitment is not too onerous! Please speak to the Deputy Headteacher at any time if you would like to be involved in the parent Group—we really do need you!
Helping in School
Parents and other family members are very welcome to come and help in school. There are different ways of doing this.
- Come into school at lunch time, and help us to encourage the children to use the library— we would love to have a proper library club running for all children at lunch times, but do not have enough adults to make this work—at the moment, we can only do this with year three.
- Help in the classroom. Many parents and family members have lots of talents that we can really use! Talk to the class teacher about when is the best time for you both.
Sometimes, parents want to help in school, but feel that they do want to be in the same class as their child—we actually encourage this, so please do talk to the teachers about this!
With more and more pressures on school staff, if other adults can come and help in any way, we are very grateful! Some parents may want to help, but not in the classroom—if we know you are coming in regularly there are many routine ‘jobs’ that can be done!
We always need extra adults on school trips—if you know your child’s class is going on a trip and you have the time, please volunteer! You will not be left alone a with a group, but your help is invaluable at these times! School trips can be great fun, and it enables parents and teachers to get to know each other better, too.