Recommendations

5.3.1 How parents can assist their children

There are many ways in which parents can be of assistance to their children. Parents can continue to build a good rapport with their child’s teacher, seeking guidance and suggestions for learning. It is further recommended that parents establish a suitable routine with their child for completing homework, including a regular study time and location, and encourage their child to maintain the routine. Parents can make a point of discussing schoolwork, successes, concerns, and interests with their child. In addition to this, parents can encourage their children to ‘exercise’ their minds by doing crossword puzzles, brainteasers, and word searches. Van Wyk and Lemmer (2009:91) propose that teachers can inspire parents to implement literacy activities at home. These activities may include:

Figure 5.1: Suggested literacy activities at home

Moreover, parents can involve relatives and family friends to help support their child’s learning activities.

5.3.2 How teachers can assist learners and their parents

It is recommended that the teacher enquire about the possibility of the mobile library service’s covering the areas where the learners reside on a regular basis. This could encourage parents and their children to join a library, especially to assist learners with their assignments and projects. The teacher can arrange with the distributors of local newspapers to deliver a copy of the newspaper to the school so that each learner in the class can be provided with a copy. The teacher can then create exercises for the learners where the parents can assist them at home with activities such as reading a particular article or writing a review on an article.

5.3.3 Application of Bloom’s Taxonomy at home

It is recommended that teachers equip parents with the necessary tools to interpret and apply Bloom’s Taxonomy in their interactions with their children at home. Parents were constantly motivated to maintain the different levels of questioning to develop critical-thinking abilities such as comparing, interpreting meaning, or organising information (Garland, 2011:5).

5.3.4 Using the diversity of the class population as a resource

It is recommended that educators use diversity as a resource within the classroom, especially given the fact that learners possess many talents. These strengths can be used as

Reading activities bedtime stories, comic strips, library books, big books, comprehension

Writing activities shopping lists, keeping a diary,

making posters, making bookmarks

marks

dialogues, reciting poems, conducting interviews

a motivation to encourage interaction between the diverse language, cultural and racial population groups to create better relationships.

5.3.5 School visits by parents to view learners’ work

School visits to view learners’ work are recommended to motivate and encourage parents to become more involved in their children’s schooling, and to encourage learners to progress in school. Parent and educator meetings should therefore be encouraged. Hornby and Lafeala (2011:40) emphasise that “schools which are welcoming to parents, and make it clear that they value parental involvement, develop more effective parental involvement than schools that do not appear inviting to parents”. It is therefore recommended that parents and educators meet on a regular basis for parents to be acquainted with what is needed in their child’s educational setting.

5.3.6 Home visits by teachers

It is recommended that teachers visit the homes of learners. This could cement good relationships between home and school. In this study, learners and the community appreciated the teacher’s efforts to meet with them in their home environment to offer assistance.

5.3.7 Parent support groups

Parental support groups could be formed to assist or advise parents, especially where parents find it difficult to assist their children with schoolwork due to various reasons like low educational levels of parents and language diversity. It is highly recommended that these support groups are representative of all racial groups in multi-cultural schools. Parents of multi-cultural communities may need further assistance with parenting tasks. Carrasquillo and Clement (1993:216) suggest that by assisting parents or other interested members of the community to understand the school curriculum and by providing literacy training in the school, parents can tutor their children in their native language. The skills can then become transferable and positive results can be achieved in diverse linguistic and cultural settings.

5.3.8 Information sharing via written communication

A regular schedule of useful notices, phone calls, newsletters and other forms of communication can be implemented. The school can provide clear information on all school policies, programmes, reforms and transitions in the form of written communication.

Teachers can also use a variety of school notes as a tool of communication between school and home.

Further recommendations focus on providing the academic link between educators and all stakeholders, especially in areas relating to parental support. Parents can be issued with circulars to answer questions they might have about homework. Questions such as: What is the purpose of homework? Does homework do more harm than good? How can the parents assist their children? In what way does homework frame formative assessments?

These are all key areas that can illuminate the role and position of the parent, and provide a space for educators to intervene if such a need is mentioned by parents. However, it is important for the educator, when communicating to parents in writing, to be sensitive to family culture and their literacy levels. Educators must limit the amount of written information to prevent parents from feeling overburdened with words and paper.