20 Parent-Teacher Conversations That Can Benefit Everybody

Meaningful parent-teacher conversations should happen regularly, but both are incredibly busy individuals. With this in mind, what are the most beneficial talks that can happen between them? To make it easy, the list below is courtesy of TeachThought. It features 20 questions for prompting the best parent-teacher conversations imaginable. When we say "best" we're talking about the ones that really matter, to them and to students.

20 Key Parent-Teacher Conversations

These 20 questions from TeachThought spark the most crucial parent-teacher conversations to have. Such conversations are a benefit to everybody, including learners themselves.

1. What academic standards do you use, and what do I need to know about them?
2. How will you respond if or when my child struggles in class?
3. What are the most important and complex (content-related) ideas my child needs to understand by the end of the year?
4. Do you focus on strengths or weaknesses?
5. How are creativity and innovative thinking used on a daily basis in your classroom?
6. How is critical thinking used on a daily basis in your classroom?
7. How are assessments designed to promote learning rather than simple measurement?
8. What can I do to meaningfully support literacy in my home?
9. What kinds of questions do you suggest that I ask my children on a daily basis about your class?
10. How exactly is learning personalized in your classroom? In the school?
11. How do you measure academic progress, and what are the strengths and weaknesses of that approach?
12. What are the most common instructional or literacy strategies you will use this year, and why?
13. What learning models do you use (e.g., project-based learning, mobile learning, game-based learning, etc.), and what do you see as the primary benefits of that approach?
14. What are the best school or district resources that we should consider using as a family to support our child in the classroom?
15. Is there technology you’d recommend that can help support my child in self-directed learning at home?
16. What are the most common barriers you see to academic progress in your classroom?
17. How is education changing?
18. How do you see the role of the teacher in the learning process?
19. What would the ideal learning environment, free of any constraints, look like?
20. What am I not asking but should be?

Read the full article at TeachThought.com

Additional Reading

• The Best Way of Saying "I Don't Know" for Achieving Meaningful Learning
• The 7 Pillars of Classroom Wisdom for Lifelong Learning
• 5 Smart Online Parent-Teacher Communication Tools for Keeping Connected