Resources for Schools and Districts:
Communicating Common Core with Families
Contents:
- Sample language for newsletters or websites
- Common Core “Tips of the Month”
- Scope and Sequence for parent meetings around Common Core
- Event ideas for families around Common Core
Sample Language for Newsletter or Website
This language can be copied, pasted, and adapted for your school or district’s use in whatever way is most helpful. “X” will be used to indicate the places to insert the name of your school or district and language that should be tailored to your context are highlighted.
New Common Core Standards
As you may know, Arizona is in the process of changing to new academic standards, called the Common Core Standards. At X, we are working very hard to make this transition smoothly. You may have seen your students doing new types of work or classrooms looking and feeling a bit different. These changes are because of the new standards and are helping our students prepare for college and their careers.
What are these new standards and why do we have them?
Academic standards say what students should know and be able to do at each grade and in each subject. Before now, every state had its own standards, and all of the standards were lower than other countries around the world. So 46 states and D.C. have adopted these new, tougher standards to make sure our students can compete globally. The Common Core Standards also ask our students to learn in a different way. They will have to do more critical thinking and learn the why behind what they are doing.
What should I know as a parent or guardian?
Changing the standards requires a lot of work for everyone involved. In X, we are already doing quite a bit to prepare, including INSERT A FEW EXAMPLES OF WHAT YOU ARE DOING (IE AMOUNT OF PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT, CHANGES IN CURRICULUM, ETC.)
As a school/district, we will be doing everything we can to keep you informed on how the transition is going. INSERT EXAMPLES OF WHEN AND HOW YOU WILL BE COMMUNICATING TO PARENTS (IE PARENT TEACHER CONFERENCES, NOTES IN NEWSLETTERS, MEETINGS, ETC.)But we need your help to make this transition successful. Please take some time to visit this website (link to Stand’s toolkit site) to learn more about the Common Core Standards and how you can help your student be prepared.
Thank you, as always, for your support of your student and of X. Together, we will make sure all of our students are on the path toward being ready for college and their career!
Common Core “Tips of the Month”
These ideas are short snippets you can include in a monthly newsletter with ideas for how parents can begin to help their students at home. Some of these ideas might make more or less sense for the grade levels at your school or in your district. Again, feel free to adapt them to make them more relevant to your community, such as including the specific name of the nearby library, etc.
Month 1 – Set up a time to talk with your child’s teacher about how prepared your child is for the new standards. Ask about what your child is strongest in and where he or she needs the most help. Come up with a plan for how you can work together to help make sure your child is ready for the new standards.
Month 2–When your child brings home math work, have him or her teach you how to do the math (even if you already know it). Having students teach what they have learned to someone else is one of the best ways to make sure they really understand it.
Month 3 – Take your child to the library and make them pick a nonfiction book to read. The nonfiction section is labeled and your child’s teacher or a librarian can help you find the right level of book. Remember – libraries are open to anyone!
Month 4 – The next time your child asks for something new, like a new game or new clothes, have them write you a page-long letter explaining why they want it and why it is a good thing for them to have.
Month 5 – Watch the national nightly news (on at 5:30 on ABC, CBS, or NBC) with your child. Have them pick one of the stories that interest them, and ask them to find out the background story on why the event being reported happened. Have them report back to you on the history of the event and explain the causes of it. They can use computers at the library to do research.
Month 6 – Set up a designated study space in your house with plenty of light and away from the TV.
Month 7 – Ask your child’s teacher to meet with you and show you your child’s academic data, including their grades this year, AIMS results from the previous year, and any other testing data they have. Then work with your child and the teacher to plan on how to get even better in certain subjects.
Month 8 – Have your child read to his or her younger siblings, cousins, or neighbors.
Month 9 – Have your child find the entrance requirements to the Arizona universities (Arizona State, Northern Arizona, and the University of Arizona). Make a plan together for how to make sure your child is going to get there. A guidance counselor at the school or someone at the Phoenix College Depot can help.
Month 10 – Have your child talk to someone who recently graduated from college (could be a teacher, coach, etc.) or who is in the workforce with a specific skill (like auto repair). Have your child ask him or her about what skills he or she needed to be successful and what he or she wishes they had known when they were younger.
Month 11 – Make a daily schedule for your child that includes time to study and time to read.
Month 12– Ask your child a lot of questions about what he or she is learning in school. Don’t let him or her just give yes or no answers! Have your child teach you what he or she is learning.
Sample Scope and Sequence for Parent Meetings
Some schools have regular meetings for parents. This scope and sequence is designed for a series of 5 meetings in a semester to really dig in to what the entire school community needs to know and be doing to support Common Core implementation. These meetings can be reordered to meet your community’s needs and as always, please adapt as needed.
Meeting 1
Objective: To introduce families to the concept of Common Core standards and the transition process
Format: As the initial exposure, district/school shares powerpoint presentation (sample can be found on this toolkit) and parents have the opportunity to ask questions
Time: Can be done in one hour, but one and a half hours would probably be more sufficient
Notes: It would be good to have an administrator and a teacher there to talk about what the district/school is doing and how the teachers are preparing. If your district/school has already begun transition to Common Core, a good opening question is to ask parents if they have been seeing any differences in their students’ work and how the work is different.
Meeting 2
Objective: To help families visualize what their children’s classes look and sound like under Common Core.
Format: Because Common Core is a big shift in instructional style, many families will not recognize the new kind of learning. Helping families see this work in action can help them really understand the changes. In this meeting, you can do a class demonstration where a small group of students and their teacher demonstrate what a new lesson would look like. Or you could show videos of a “Common Core classroom” and talk with parents about how it is different from what they might imagine. This meeting could also be incorporated with a science fair or other project fair so families can also see the new work product students will be producing.
Time: One and a half hours
Notes: Of all the meetings, this one should be the most contextualized to your school/district. Give teachers the opportunity to be creative and answer the question – “if parents wanted to see what the Common Core looked like, how would I show them?”
Meeting 3
Objective: To equip families to support their children with the Common Core at home.
Format: This meeting should be a hands-on workshop, completely focused on teaching families different activities they can do with their students. You could go through a couple of the examples found in this powerpoint (link) or in the other parent resources linked in this toolkit. You could also have parents split up into grade-level groups and talk with the grade-level teacher about what would be helpful for them to do. Another idea would be to do a technology demonstration so families understand what technological skills their children will need to complete the new assessments.
Time: At least one and a half hours. If you want to do a resource fair or technology workshop, you might need longer.
Notes: This meeting would be a great time to bring in external partners (librarians, extracurricular activities, nonprofits, etc.) who can provide support for students so families who what is available to them.
Meeting 4
Objective: To develop a shared understanding of the current status of the school’s academic data and what the focus areas should be to prepare for Common Core.
Format: The school or district leader presents academic achievement data from the previous year as well as any benchmark assessments in the current year. The leader should also share where these results align with the Common Core (i.e. are these benchmark assessments Common Core-aligned or are they aligned to the old standards? If they are aligned to the old standards, does the school/district know how the data would look on a Common Core-level assessment?). And finally, the leader should share the status of the concrete steps the school/district is taking to prepare for the Common Core. Then – depending on the size of the group – you can either have a whole group discussion to identify areas of strength and areas that need improvement. You could also break down into grade level groups so parents can look primarily at that grade’s data and progress.
Time: One and a half hours
Notes: This conversation should be not be for action planning (that is the next meeting), but rather understanding exactly where the school and students stand. You should, though, send families home with the following “homework”: based on what you learned last month and seeing the data today, start thinking about what you should be focusing on at home to help your child get ready for the Common Core.
Meeting 5
Objective: To develop an action plan as a school community and as a family to ensure all students are ready for the new expectations.
Format:Begin with a quick review of the previous four sessions and set the expectation that you will now be planning for action that everyone needs to take. First, open with a general discussion of the themes parents have seen and ask what parents still need/want from the school or district. Then brainstorm the steps everyone can take collectively to help with the transition process. Develop a school/district action plan for what parents and the school can do together. Have time for individual families to develop their own action plans and discuss them with others.
Time: One and a half to two hours
Notes: If you have or know someone who has experience in facilitating strategic planning conversations, you should ask them to facilitate this meeting.
Potential Evening Events to Host
These ideas are some ways to engage families in the transition to Common Core outside of a standard meeting setting. If you host any of these events and have feedback or thoughts for others, please let Stand for Children know so we can share your experiences with others!
Parents As Students Night
Families would come to school and the parents would take the place of their child. They could sit in their child’s class and the teacher will lead the “students” through a sample lesson. This type of experience could help some families better understand how the classroom their student is experiencing is different from what they experienced.
Science Fair or Student Project Night
Host an evening viewing of Science Fair projects or other projects (such as History Day) so more families can attend. Have the students who present their projects talk about how they learned the material in a way beyond textbooks and worksheets.
Parent/Student Technology Night
Open the computer lab for families to come. You can do a demonstration of what students will have to be doing on the computer for the new assessments, and you can give families and children the opportunity to practice together.