Below is an outline of how I have tried to help year 11 parents be more involved with their child’s maths in this crucial year.
Initial contact – September 2014
Letter sent home introducing teacher and inviting parent in for open evening. Email addresses asked for on reply slip (28 out of 30 emails recieved).
First open evening – October 2014. See notebook file “Year 11 parents meeting”
Presentation given to parents with opportunity for questions. Main points made;
- The importance of mathematics GCSE
- Everyone can do maths attitude
- Students must work hard
- How to organise work (use of folders, books and Google spreadsheet)
- Parent support
- Support at school (maths surgery, mymaths, mathswatch, videos)
- How to use videos
- Test results with follow ups to be emailed to parents
Parents given an individual flyer with their child’s personal login details for mymaths, mathswatch and instructions for signing up to hegartymaths.com See flyer “Year 11 flyer”
Specification and topic list
All parents emailed course specification with;
- topics studied in year 10- highlighted red
- topics studied in year 11- highlighted in green
- topics to be studied – highlighted in yellow
Test results
All parents emailed their child’s test results following topic tests and mocks with links for supporting test follow ups using mail merge. Example email below;
Dear parent,
“Student name” achieved “student’s mark” out of 200 in their recent mathematics mock exam. This is a grade “student grade”.
Your child has been given an individual breakdown of their marks on every question and the topic concerned, students need to set themselves two targets (for example “To calculate the area of compound shapes) and action these. An action should involve them doing some questions on this; students could use mymaths.co.uk, one of my videos, attend maths surgery or come to see me any time. This has all been explained in class. Students have also been emailed link to full solutions to these exam papers. Here they are again;
Paper 1 – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAdpPloVdOU
Paper 2 – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KN1YguHW9M
Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions.
Kind regards,
Sam Hoggard
Second open evening – November 2014 See notebook file “Year 11 revision”
Focus of presentation was “how to revise for GCSE maths” with opportunity to ask questions. Main points made;
- Students must work hard
- How to organise work (books, folders, online checklist)
- Work area at home
- Equipment needed
- Revision techniques (flash cards, videos, mock papers)
- Visualisation strategy
Parents emailed “Information from revision session”.
Pre-parents’ evening information
All parents emailed details of revision information including;
- How students should use checklist
Survey
All parents emailed survey to assess impact of this program.
Summary report
Q1. Did you attend first open evening?
Q4. Did you attend second open evening?
Q5. Did you find the evening useful?
Q6. Any suggestions for improving the evening.
Q7. Have you received regular emails?
Q9. Any suggestions for improving these emails.
Q10. Any other comments.
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