What can parents do to help their children succeed in school?
A record 160 people turned out for the year’s first Combining Parenting and a Career (CPC) seminar. The presentation 'What can parents do to help their children succeed at school?' was delivered by Professor Stuart McNaughton, head of the Woolf Fisher Research Centre.
A record 160 people turned out for the year’s first Combining Parenting and a Career (CPC) seminar. The presentation 'What can parents do to help their children succeed at school?' was delivered by Professor Stuart McNaughton, head of the Woolf Fisher Research Centre.
Acknowledging that the title of the presentation came from a 2011 OECD report, Professor McNaughton highlighted three high impact areas for parents to focus on with their children: reading, talking and engaging. By reading early and often with children, talking about and elaborating on the content of books, and engaging with them around stories, ideas and activities that trigger their interest, parents and carers can help build and strengthen their children’s comprehension and language acquisition skills.
Professor McNaughton encouraged the audience to think of teaching as a continuum, from 'explicit' to 'embedded'. As children grow up and enter formal learning environments, teaching becomes more explicit; thus, the more parents, carers and whanau are able to embed learning opportunities into a diverse mix of engagement styles (such as talking, reading, singing), the greater the potential impact on their children.
Professor McNaughton fielded a variety of questions from the audience that ranged from the pros and cons of the introducing digital technologies to primary school children (“There’s no evidence that shows they’re bad for learning”), to whether Year 8 children should be feeling pressured by spelling tests (“Kids of that age should not have examination stress”) and concerns from a dad that his eight-month-old wants to be read the same book every night (“Repetition is good; take your cues from your child.”).
“My first love is literacy. But literacy and achievement are not the be all and end all of learning,” said Professor McNaughton, who noted that the New Zealand Curriculum celebrates emotional and social outcomes as well as academic success. “First and foremost, make sure your child is happy.”