Recently the staff analysed and implemented key messages from an article by leading educational expert, Dr John Hattie, tilted, Visible Learning Effect Sizes When Schools Are Closed: What Matters and What Does Not.

Hattie has these key messages for teachers and parents: 

• Do not panic if our kids miss 10 or so weeks (research shows that this length of missed time has a minimal effect on learning)
• It is not the time in class, but what we do in the time we have, that matters 
• Make sure to provide opportunities to learn what students do not know and do not engage them in “busy work”  
• Worry more about subjects in which parents have the least skill and about subjects and tasks where parents make kids skill and drill and lose the thrill (especially math). 

In terms of advancing learning, a vital factor is knowing where students are now and where they need to go next. In their planning and teaching, teachers are setting activities and collecting feedback to identify what students know (and don’t know) in order to guide students to what they need to learn next (and how to do it). Further, teachers need to ensure that students at home engage in the optimal tasks; not just busy tasks, not just projects that keep them entertained, not boring repetitive activities, that is, tasks that focus on where they need to go next.

From a learning@home point of view, your role as a parent or caregiver helping to foster learning is to create routines for learning and allow your children to not know. There is no point having kids learn stuff they already know, not knowing is a sign of readiness and excitement for learning. The climate of the learning@home matters. It should be one of high expectations and high levels of communication (talk, talk, talk, listen, listen, listen). It needs to allow for errors and mistakes as opportunities to learn, not opportunities to do it again with the hope that the second time it will magically become right. Any learning should include opportunities for students to give feedback about their learning and to receive feedback about where to go next. 

Remember, if students get stuck, do not know what to do next, or make errors, parents and caregivers are not expected to know about the errors or what best to do next. At this stage, it is vital that the teachers are informed and guide those next steps. If your children don’t know, make sure you contact your children’s teachers as soon as possible.

Another very important role of parents and caregivers is to encourage kids to read, read, read and also talk about their reading, so the story is important, the vocabulary is stretched, and then simultaneously, keep teaching the skills of reading to make reading pleasurable. Reading at home is so essential to learning.

For more specialised subjects like maths and science, parents and caregivers are not expected to be experts, leave it to the teachers. Help more in those subjects you are familiar with.

Finally, Hattie makes the point that we need to be doubly concerned about those students who most need teacher expertise—those from homes where parents and caregivers are least likely to be teachers, students with special needs who require specialised instruction, those who already do not like learning at school, and those who come to school primarily to be with their friends (for them learning alone is a killer). In this respect, teachers are conscious of who these students are, the requirement to cater the learning for them and the need to regularly communicate with them. Again, two-way communication between teachers and parents and caregivers is vital here for successful learning.

God Bless