Blog Archives

Building a Better Student Success Strategy for Back-to-School

7/24/2024

Accelerated academic achievement. Second language learning. Social and emotional skill development. Increased attendance and engagement. Higher graduation rates. A handful of astonishing student-level benefits.

We partnered with BetterLesson on a white paper where we explore the research-backed benefits of family engagement, signals that a school system is under-investing in family engagement, and high-impact strategies for student success.

Read paper!

Who should be thinking about this?

District administrators are grappling with looming budget cuts and a need to streamline technology. Building leaders are grappling with chronic absenteeism and persisting learning loss. Teachers are grappling with feelings of overwhelming to do lists and burnout.

Educators are beginning to prepare for the upcoming academic year. Addressing these persisting systemic challenges will require collaborative problem solving to address root causes.

Incremental steps to improve family engagement

Building leaders and classroom educators can take several steps to incrementally adjust their current practices.

Understand the existing evidence base
Reflect on your current practices
Identify high-impact practices
Create your plan

Get Action Plan Toolkit

When you think Student success, you should be thinking About Family Engagement

7/24/2024

Educators are grappling with wide-ranging challenges including absenteeism, persisting learning loss, teacher retention, and looming budget cuts. The schools that are effectively addressing these systemic challenges are making investments in family engagement and, more specifically, implementing high-impact strategies for engaging families in student learning.

Elisabeth O’Bryon and Megan Lorio joined the team at EdReports to discuss family engagement as an essential strategy for student learning success. This podcast is a must listen for school leaders planning for the next school year.

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Move beyond performances and potlucks: the surprising benefits of family communication

Decades of family engagement research demonstrates strong connections between consistent school-home communication that is focused on instructional goals with key outcomes for teachers, families, and students.

Teachers get support and feedback

Through consistent communication with families, teachers gain access to information about their students’ interests and needs, a trusted adult as a resource to support students’ goals, and essential feedback to affirm their strengths and fuel professional growth.

Families feel empowered to help

Families feel empowered to help when they receive a welcoming invitation to support their child’s learning, access to actionable tips and activities they can use anywhere, and the opportunity to help connect classroom learning to their child’s interests.

Students experience learning gains

Students who have access to resources and support inside and outside the classroom experience increased motivation and engagement, improved attendance, and academic gains.

How to level-up your family engagement strategy

Building a comprehensive strategy takes time and planning. Before starting the planning process, it is essential to gather input from families, teachers, and the community to understand the current state of your school. What is working well? What needs additional time or attention? We’d recommend that you read our blog that covers 5 actions that school leaders can take to build strong home-school connections.

In this podcast, Elisabeth and Megan share high-impact strategies and tips for maximizing your family engagement efforts to support student learning.

Listen Now

Are you planning for next school year? Our expert team has designed a family communication toolkit with practical tips and messages that you can use as you plan for back-to-school

Get toolkit!

Strategies for reducing students’ math anxiety

7/10/2024

As school leaders, math teachers, and families prepare for the upcoming school year, strategies for supporting students’ success with math will be essential. With estimates that approximately 93% of adult US-Americans experience some level of math anxiety, it is critical to identify strategies that teachers and families can implement to help shape students’ positive growth mindsets and experiences with math.

We know that teachers play a powerful role in the development of mathematical mindsets and skills, including, implementing teaching practices that focus on fostering a growth mindset in math and building classroom environments that are supportive of those mindsets. In addition, we’ve shared other strategies that teachers can implement daily to foster classroom environments that support positive math mindsets.

Overcoming objections: "I'm not a math person"

Reimagining the role of families in reducing math anxiety

A recent study highlighted the powerful role that families play, "by fostering discussions about the importance, relevance, and application of math in everyday life." By doing so, "families and communities can create supportive environments for math learning outside of the classroom, which enhances students’ engagement inside the classroom." Furthermore, the results from this study suggest that students do better when:

Families and communities have high expectations of them
Districts/schools connect their teachers and families with cultural and language supports
They have community resources during out-of-school time to reinforce their math learning

Families play an essential role in supporting math success. Yet, many teachers are missing an opportunity to activate a powerful resource.

Strategies for equipping families to support math success

Dr. Elisabeth O’Bryon recently delved into the role that families play in helping students develop a growth mindset with math. Consistent teacher-parent communication is the single most important strategy to ensure families are equipped with information and actionable activities to support student success with math. Our expert team has compiled 3 best practices for making the most of your parent communication activities:

Avoid making assumptions about what families know (and don’t). Consider asking for input from families that they would find most helpful. When crafting messages, minimize the use of jargon and consider using tools that offer translation into families' home languages.
Include environmental prompts for connecting math concepts to everyday life. Families live mathematical lives (for example, noticing math in cooking or sports) and there are opportunities to weave math into everyday activities. This can make math more visible and relevant in their child’s life.
Appreciate the rich perspectives that families bring. Families know about and care deeply about their children. Welcoming the insights they have to offer will bring a more holistic picture of students in your classroom.

We're excited to offer K-8th grade-level math content for teachers and families

In addition to our literacy and SEL learning tips and activities, we are excited to offer FASTalk messages that are aligned with key concepts and learning goals for math. This comprehensive math content equips families with essential information about math concepts and prompts for engaging their child in conversations about math outside of the classroom. The messages include conversation starters, routines to try, and reflection opportunities to help strengthen a child’s growth mindset and mathematical skills.

Currently, our K-8 math content aligns to grade levels and units of the high-quality curriculum, Illustrative Mathematics, and soon we will support skills-based, standards-aligned math content in our library. Learn more about our mathematics content and how to bring FASTalk to your school.

Explore Math Content

Family Engagement Lab Blog Archives