Tips for Parents

We’ve got Parent/Teacher Conferences happening in our area at the end of this week.

As a teacher, I was always a little nervous before conferences, but I liked them because I learned so much about my students by meeting their parents. And the conferences usually went pretty well. Except for that one time when I realized half-way through the conference that I was talking with Kelsey’s parents, but that I’d been talking about the other Kelsey that was in my class. Oops.

In honor of Parent/Teacher Conferences, I wanted to share our leveled reading article, “Tips for Parents.”

This article – written at three different reading levels so that students can read the same content but at an appropriately challenging level – describes tips for parents of teenagers.

I first used this article with a group of middle school reading students. I was teaching a class for struggling readers. The class was limited to 12 students, so we were able to have some great discussions. This article was one that got some interesting conversation going, that extended through the rest of the week – especially after a couple of the kids apparently shared some of the tips with their own parents at home that evening.

Oh, how I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall for those conversations.