Literacy Matters - Winter 2020

Inquiry into Additional Forms of Teacher Communication with Families and Caregivers Five teachers participated in informal conversations regarding their school-to-home communication methods. Three teachers were from the same school and spanned kindergarten, 3rd grade, and 6th grade. The fourth teacher was from the same region but a different county and has taught kindergarten for more than 20 years. The fifth teacher was an art teacher in a different county and region and taught grades K-5. All were asked how they communicated with families and caregivers, both about individual children and the class as a whole. The five teachers shared their current practices. We used this information to prompt our inquiry into existing methods of school-home communication and how we could best inform our pre-service and beginning teachers on these practices. Results The results of this study have shown a variety of school- teacher-home communication methods. Across 100 counties, schools and teachers’websites were examined, showing a varying degree of school and teacher website use. Across three schools and seven grade levels, additional recommendations were made by teachers for current teacher communication methods. Webpage Ratings Webpages were given a composite score according to the criteria designed for this study. As previously stated, no websites exceeded 8 points, and as so, we lowered our Above Average rating to a maximum of 8. This allowed our range of data to be scored from 0-8 in the above categories and served to enable us to compare website quality across 100 counties. Each of the three randomly selected classrooms by grade level were rated independently according to the criteria. A table was created showing the school webpage results with the three classroom scores listed. Table 1 provides a comparative school results sample that shows two representative school results, County 32 and 33. The table shows how the school website and teacher webpages are rated separately and differ in results. The complete list of ratings by school and grade level are included in Appendix B (Results of Teacher MaintainedWebpages).

generator again to pick teachers from one of three grade-level bands. These bands were K-1, 2-3, and 4-5. As so, for each county, we looked at four total websites, one school, and three teacher websites for a total of 400 data points to analyze the features of the websites and how effective they were for teacher-caregiver communication. To analyze the school websites, we developed a rubric of items and criteria we thought would be necessary to increase regular school to caregiver communication. These included factors such as currency of information, whether schools had a Parent-Teacher Association (PTA) or Organization (PTO), if there were frequent opportunities for caregivers to volunteer, if caregivers were open to communicate and provide feedback for administration, if the school used social media to communicate, and if the school communicated over a variety of different formats (phone calls, text messaging, e-mails, apps) in a variety of different languages. These were chosen as we considered some of the experiences we have had in classrooms and schools, and the things that we looked for and considered when engaging in the website as well. The complete rubric is included in Appendix A: Rubric for Teacher Webpages and School Websites. Inquiry into Teacher Webpages Two hundred ninety-two (292) teachers’webpages were examined in this study. These came from the three hundred teacher websites (three from each county), excluding the eight teachers that had no websites listed. Each of the teacher’s websites were evaluated and put into one of the following three categories: Above Average (6-8 points), Average (3-5 points), and Below Average or NoWebsite (0-2/ N/A). The total number of points that the websites could score was 15. There were no websites that exceeded 8 points, and as so, we lowered our Above Average score to a maximum of 8. This allowed our range of data to be scored from 0-8 in the above categories and served to enable us to compare website quality across 100 counties. We considered the same criteria as above when developing our rubric for teacher websites, but also added extra elements that more often fit classroom dynamics. This included looking for items such as access to homework assignments, the usage of an electronic classroom newsletter, access to grading sites, and the opportunity for students to explore extra educational resources on their own time. As two of the co-authors were pre-service teachers, these features were particularly important as we considered what messages a strong or weak school-home communication send. Combining these with criteria used to evaluate school websites helped us to gain a holistic idea of the number of opportunities available through webpages caregivers had to communicate both with their child’s teacher and with school administration. Once we developed the rubric, we rated each webpage according to criteria. We then tallied the number of criteria each website had met and gave the teacher or school that score. We used this number to compare teacher websites to one another across schools and counties. Doing this gave us an idea of what the best teacher websites included, what average websites included, and what the weakest teacher websites included.

Reading Matters Research Matters

COUNTY NUMBER County 32 County 33 County 58

SCHOOL SCORE K-1 SCORE 2-3 SCORE 4-5 SCORE

3 5 3

2 1

3 0 8

3 4 4

NA

Table 1: Comparative school results sample

The Above Average websites received between 6-8 points from our checklist. They met nearly half (or more) of all the criteria that we considered in the study. Of the 292 teacher websites that we analyzed, 8% of teachers fell into this category. Typically, these websites included knowledge of the children’s classroom schedule, open communication between the teacher and the caregiver, opportunities for caregivers to give the teacher feedback, access to extra resources that students and caregivers could use at home, and the addition of a classroom app to bridge communication.

| 36 | Literacy Matters | Volume 20 • Winter 2020 | scira.org

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