Can you please help with this question?
The most well attended parent meetings are those that are based on:
1. the teacher's assumptions of what
parents need to know.
2. the planned and prescribed curriculum
of the parent education manual.
3. the needs and interests identified
by parents.
4. early childhood curriculum modules.
Wouldn't the most appropriate answer
be #3, the needs and interests
identified by parents?
Yes, #3 is most likely. I found that general parent meetings or nights when all we did was preview the year's curriculum were not well attended, but when we had individual parent conferences (parents want to find out about THEIR OWN child!), the attendance level went WAY UP!!
=)
The best attended Parent meeting ever in my HSchool in Mississippi is when the chemistry kids did a fireworks show from their on made up fireworks. Parents actually applauded each burst. So much for curricula. Attendance that night was almost double the size of the graduating class that year.
We did one on personality styles that was ALWAYS well attended. Our parent meetings at that particular school were a huge success every time.
Had nothing to do with luck. We always found out what parents liked to hear about. The school had a ton of parent commitees. One was the education commitee and they were in charge of getting together with us and coming up with topics for parent nights.
My personal favorite had to do with having the parents come in and work in the classroom for an hour. The administrator at the school said one year, a father came in and dumped the Africa Puzzle on a rug. She said she just smiled and said, "Good. Now put it back together." That's a really hard puzzle to piece together - even with the control map we used.
Matt