This book offers practical advice for early years practitioners on ways to work effectively with parents.” -CHILDHOOD EDUCATION

Involving Parents in their Children's Learning is the story of the pioneering work of the Pen Green Centre for children and families. Showing how early years practitioners can collaborate effectively with parents, the book includes case studies of parents and children who have attended the centre, studies which chart developments in learning for both children and parents. The book will inspire early years practitioners and offer them practical advice on ways of developing effective work with parents.

Drawing on their work at the renowned Pen Green Centre, the authors show how to:

support parents as their child's first educator; provide practical and psychological support to parents; involve fathers and male carers; share important child development concepts; support and extend children's learning; reach out to hard-to-reach parents

This New Edition follows up on the stories of people featured in the first edition, showing how they have progressed over the last few years. It also includes new chapters covering the headteacher's role in developing parental involvement programmes, how the Pen Green model has been applied in primary schools, and the use of parental diaries.

The book is essential reading for students on early years courses (BA, FdA, B.Ed), as well as practising early years professionals and senior management teams in primary schools.

Getting to Know the Families

Getting to Know the Families

Getting to know the families
ColetteTait

Our image of the child is rich in potential, strong, powerful, competent and, most of all, connected to adults and other children.

(Malaguzzi, 1993; quoted in Edwards, Gandini and Forman, 1998, p. 42)

In this chapter, I want to look at the many different ways we try to encourage parents to become involved in their children's learning. Over the life of the project we developed a range of ‘models of engagement’ to appeal to as many different nursery parents as possible. Firstly, I will share how we ‘get to know’ the families we are working with, and want to appeal to. I will describe the nine different ‘models of engagement’ we have set up, how we monitor the ...

  • Loading...
locked icon

Sign in to access this content

Get a 30 day FREE TRIAL

  • Watch videos from a variety of sources bringing classroom topics to life
  • Read modern, diverse business cases
  • Explore hundreds of books and reference titles