Back to School Week: Workshop + Parents

Yesterday, Jen asked:

As you are blogging about back to school, I wondered if you have any hints/tips for a parent presentation or handout to be use on Back to School Night? We are transitioning into Writer’s Workshop using Lucy Calkins’ Units of Study in the upper grades from a more activity driven 6-Traits based model. Teachers are anticipating that parents who are interested in what their kids will be facing in middle school will have “issues” with this move. We want to be able to answer those concerns while exciting parents (because we are excited 3 weeks into school!) about the love of writing their kids are about to experience as we move to UOS.

Certainly a pressing issue.  Before I tell you how I’d approach it, I’d like to share a story.

I thought everyone was gelling with the nightly, open-ended writing homework my fourth year of teaching, until Family-Teacher Conferences came.  One of my student’s mom’s looked me square in the eye and told me, “We have a nightly battle about the writing homework.  It doesn’t take ten minutes… it can take hours.  I feel like this is ruining his childhood!”  Not only was I shocked, I was saddened.  This was not the intent of the nightly writing homework.  I reminded this parent that her son had many strategies for generating writing in his notebook.  I told her to just remind him to use his strategies, time him (i.e., ten minute), let him write rapidly, and then make him close his notebook and walk away.  However, that wasn’t enough.  I armed her with the strategies that I was sharing with the students, in-class, so that she would be aware of what her son already knew.  That way, when he said, “I don’t know what to write about,” she had a full list of things he could do to help himself when he didn’t know what to write about in his notebook.

Somehow, that worked.  Let’s just say this student turned out to be one of the most gifted writers I’ve ever taught… he just had trouble getting started since he hadn’t ever been asked to write nightly prior to being in fourth grade.  Additionally, this mom and I are friends to this day.  I think one of the reasons we are friendly is because she was brutally honest with me.  Because of her honesty, I knew how to prevent something like this from happening the next year.

Last year, at Open School Night, I handed out a list (in English and in Spanish) of strategies students could use to generate writing in their notebook if and when they got stuck.  Arming parents with strategies, such as using the heart map, writing Slice of Life Stories, and others (many of which came from Ralph Fletcher’s Website), made them feel empowered.  They were more confident when trying to assist their child with nightly writing.  No longer did parents have to feed their child topic ideas since they knew their child knew how to generate nightly anecdotes (since they did it daily at school).

In terms of convincing parents that Units of Study are the way to go, there are a few things you can do:

1. On the Units of Study CD-ROM is a parent letter.  I highly suggest adapting it and sending it home every month, at the beginning of a unit of study.  For any unit you self-create, you should send home a similar letter.  Not only will this help parents stay more informed about the curriculum, but it will open a line of communication with you about the writing curriculum.

2. Provide students with an overview of the Writing Curriculum Map your grade has created for the year.  Allow them to peruse the Map with you at Open School Night.  Explain how each unit will meet state standards.  To that end, make sure families see you’re covering all of the grade-level indicators that your state mandates so that they won’t think there are any holes in your curriculum.  (If you discover there are holes, then patch them up before Open School Night with your colleagues.

3. Explain the variety of genres you’ll cover during the school year, with an emphasis on the personal essay and literary essay, which I think are the units that truly prepare students for the work that lies ahead in middle school.  Offer to share the goals of the unit with parents, and even objectives of each minilesson, so they’ll feel more at-ease with the work their children will be doing.

4. Finally, remind parents that the SATs are not that far away.  In order to prepare children for the writing portion of that test, it’s important that they have the stamina to write.  Workshop helps kids build this kind of stamina.

Sharing information, such as copies of classroom charts or even some minilessons, with parents can really go a long way to help build a relationship of trust with a parent who is reluctant about the curriculum shift.