Working with parents to raise attainment

Paget HighRichard Blaize, Head of ICT

Portway Infant SchoolKaty Lynas, Teacher

Rosemary Harper, Teacher

St Clement Danes SchoolTom Phillips, Network Manager

Teach Talks

Richard Blaize@richardblaize

School Background

• Approx. 1000 pupils and 60 staff• Average Daily Unique Log Ons 1300• Christmas Day 2012 over 200 log ons

Richard Blaize @richardblaize

• Revision website accessible to pupils, staff and parents

• The website has its own URL allowing for access without going through Frog

Richard Blaize @richardblaize

• Examination Timetable• Start times, Examination title, Exam board,

Duration and Room

Richard Blaize @richardblaize

• All subjects have their own page• Each page is built to allow departments to

add/remove content as and when• Overall design and navigation remains intact

Richard Blaize @richardblaize

Richard Blaize @richardblaize

Richard Blaize @richardblaize

Twitter

Richard Blaize @richardblaize

• Using Twitter to publicise the revision website and each individual examination

• Tweets give the examination information the day before the exam and the day of the exam

Richard Blaize @richardblaize

• Parents and pupils use Twitter to ask messages about examinations and request material to appear on the revision website

Richard Blaize @richardblaize

Richard Blaize @richardblaize

I Am Learning

Richard Blaize @richardblaize

• ‘I Am Learning’ has been added to the revision website during the year

• Using ‘I Am Learning’ Year 11 have revised for almost 700 hours

Richard Blaize @richardblaize

Richard Blaize @richardblaize

Hints, Tips and Advice

Richard Blaize @richardblaize

• Advertise, advertise, advertise – letters, parents evenings, newsletter, school WWW

• Give the website its own URL• Allow staff to manage content and advise on

use• Recommend the use of PDF documents• When tweeting avoid using terms like ‘today’

or ‘tomorrow’ be specific with the tweets• If you receive a tweet reply to it ASAP• Retweet examinations from other accounts

Richard Blaize @richardblaize

Working with parents to raise attainment

Portway Infant School, Derby.

Background info

• Portway Infant School, Derby• 235 children on roll• _ without internet access / computer at home.

Engaging parents – non technological techniques

• Infant school relies on the engagement of parents

• Take home Tuesday• Coffee mornings• Information and curriculum meetings• Parents evenings and reports• Ten minute ‘welcome’ time in the classroom

each morning.

Engaging parents – technological techniques

• Website, more for prospective parents • Text messaging service• Learning platform – main platform for

communication with parents, relevant information for parents within class sites amongst the main school information forum.

• Message to teacher, emails.

Learning from the past; Sharepoint

Parents Staff

Children can’t be independent Unreliable

Too much time Too much time

I am going to miss important information Not easy to upload - multiple docs

Too many clicks An extra job, parents still need paper

Unreliable – down at weekend Corporate site

Not like sites children want to use Not infant friendly – not how we teach

Where can I get help? Used folder structure beyond belief!

What we were looking for;FROG

Essential Desirable

Infant friendly – pictures, videos and more pictures. WOW factor

Reduce page clicks

Potential for independence Easy access to passwords

Easy to get around – parents and children Alternative to folders

Reliable

Key advice – what the staff think

• (Hopefully little video clips to go here!)

Implementation – how it works for us

• Staff confidence first!• Staff meetings and

training• Team work• Support• Amend policy • Chocolate bribes!

• Children and parents use same username

• Raise enthusiasm within classroom

• Incite curiosity – and introduce bribes (teddy)

• Sustain interest (school and home)

• Offer support

Raising attainment – continuing learning at home

• (Screen shots to be moved into a few slides to show activities to continue learning at home and for parents support – ensuring we all support children in the same way with lit and maths for example.)

• 4 screen shots

Frog Conference 2013

St Clement Danes School

Working with parents to raise attainment

Frog at St Clement Danes

• Frog installed 2009

• Used well throughout the school

• Developing Parental Portal

• Looking to move towards Frog OS

Parental Portal – Benefits and Drawbacks

• Benefits– Parents feel more included– Information is readily available to parents– Cut down on admin work– Staff encourage to promote good behaviour/achievements

• Drawbacks– Data needs to be correct, up to date and stay up to date– Additional work load?

Parental Portal – Engaging parents• What would parents want to see?– Childs information:

• Assessment – Achievements• Timetable• Attendance• Reports• Frog Activity

– School information:• What’s happening/events• Ways to contact the school – careful!

Parental portal – Focus

• Assessment / Attendance– MIS database – Sims.net– Aspects– Subjects– Information to display – Graphs, Tables, IF

statements for key stages

Parental portal - Journey• Portal template supplied by Frog.• Bulk of time was spent on this. Check MIS

Aspects and tidy MIS system.• Frog Extractor setup but no data pulled over yet.• Data pulled across, we checked how it was

displayed and configured our Frog template.• Displayed data that was confusing was removed.• IF statements setup to segment Key stage data.

• Staff parents were given logon details.• Bugs and Feedback was received and

adjustments made.

Parental portal template

Check and Update MIS

Extract and Interpret Data

Configure and Simplify Data

Test with Staff parents

Parental portal – Next steps

• We plan to release the portal to a single year group for a full academic year to test how well it is received.

• Feedback from this will determine the next step.

• Our overall aim is to give all students parents the ability to use the parental portal over the next few academic years.

Release to Single Year

group

Stagger full release

Parental Portal – Raising Attainment

• Parents can see information about their child quicker and in more detail. Information is not lost in transit or mislaid.

• Parents can then address issues and identify areas where their pupils at the school can improve.

• Parents can track progress over previous months or years quickly and spot trends that might otherwise not be apparent.

• A lot of the work a parent would have to do in order to get a clear overview of how a student is doing is done within the parental portal.

Any questions?

Teach Talks