Everyday Engagement: Making Students and Parents Your Partners in Learning, Jan/2011

While there are lots of books about how to engage students more effectively in the classroom, here at last is a book that also makes engaging parents part of a solution to higher student achievement. Top-selling ASCD author and classroom teacher Katy Ridnouer explains what you need to do to lay the groundwork for student-parent engagement and roll out a year-long strategy that keeps students in class, behavior in check, and learning on track:

How to invite students and parents to engage.

What to do when your invitations are rejected.

Ways to tap outside resources to extend learning into the home and community.

Explore pro-engagement action and attitudes that help you embed student-parent engagement into everyday practice, including

Effective push-backs to the typical excuses for failure.

Communication routines that draw in disaffected students and parents.

Ways to match student and parent activity to student and parent interests.

Steps for getting parents to support their children’s work ethic and improve their attitude toward learning.