Parental Involvement In Ms. Kenney's Class

Fairfax county has made technology and resources readily available for their classrooms. Laptop carts are available for each grade. Washington Mill utilizes these laptops regularly in an effort to have their curriculum and instruction be driven by data from students. They do this by having students take end of unit tests on a website called Horizon. This testing site allows teachers and administrators to not only see scores but to analyze the results of the test question by question. Another way technology is utilized is through the use of smart boards and smart projectors which have been in every classroom I have observed thus far. Fairfax county provides prepared smart board activities in their pacing guides for many of the lesson plans. The smart projector is put to good use in Ms. Kenney’s class. She uses it as a way to project reading material for the students. Students usually have a copy of the reading material at their seat but can also follow along as the teacher reads on the projector. It is especially useful when having them do a foldable activity in which each …show more content…
Kenney’s classroom is low. Many of the parents need translators for parent teacher communication, because they do not speak english. There are many different languages and dialects spoken by the parents of our students because of the diverse population in this area. This causes difficulty in having daily communication between the classroom and home. In addition many of our students are from low income families, while I’m positive they would like to be more involved many of them can not afford to take time off work in order to do so. I have seen this struggle first hand watching Ms. Kenney try to schedule parent teacher conferences. It is problematic to schedule these conferences during the morning or afternoon when Ms. Kenney is available because most parents are working at that time. Furthermore, limited availability of translators likewise inhibits prompt