Supporting Your Child's Learning
Communication
We provide a supportive academic environment in many ways, especially through growth mindsets:
- being optimistic about the potential for personal growth
- embracing challenges and regarding failure as an opportunity to learn and improve.
We have a strong open door policy. If you have a concern, please come in and talk with your child’s teacher or any of our administration.
It is The Community for Learning’s goal to provide good communication with parents (emails, love notes, website, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube). TCFL will communicate regularly through emails and will post relevant information on the website. Please keep contact information (phone numbers and e-mails) up-to-date to facilitate effective communication.
WEBSITE: www.tcfl.edu.do
FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/The-Community-for-Learning
INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/tcflschool/
BLOG: http://teachingexperiment.com/
9 Ways to Help Your Child Succeed in School (adapted from Kidshealth.org)
1. Attend Back-to-School Morning, Parent-Teacher Conferences, and Community Coffee.
Children do better in school when parents support their academic efforts. Attending back-to-school morning is a great way to get to know your child's teachers and their expectations. Attending parent-student-teacher conferences is another way to stay informed, and to find out how you can support your child’s learning at home.
Parents or guardians may also request meetings with teachers, directors, or school counselors at any time during the school year.
2. Visit the School Website
On the school website you can find information about:
- the school calendar
- contacting school staff
- special events like class trips
- schedules for sports, clubs, and other extracurricular activities
Although we do not give much homework to elementary students, developing good homework and time management habits is essential to life-long success. An important way to help is to make sure your child has a quiet, well-lit, distraction-free place to study. Distraction-free means no phone, TV, or websites other than homework-related resources.
Daily reading is our most important homework assignment. Students who read regularly tend to do better academically. Help your child develop a strong reading habit, by making sure he or she reads daily for at least half an hour.
During the high school years, homework gets more intense and grades become critical for college plans. Students planning to attend college also need to prepare for the SATs or entrance exams. Amid all these changes, many teens are learning how to balance academics with extracurricular activities, social lives, and jobs.
Regularly sit down with your teen to help him or her stick to a homework and study schedule. Encourage your teen to ask for help when it's needed. Most teachers are available for extra help during the school day and may be able to recommend extra help.
4. Send Your Child to School Ready to Learn
Healthy breakfast: A nutritious breakfast fuels children up and gets them ready for the day. In general, students who eat breakfast have more energy and do better in school.
Healthy lunch: Send your child to school with a healthy lunch in order to refuel during the day. Check out healthy lunch ideas here.
Sleep: children 6 to 12 years of age should sleep 9 to 12 hours a day. Teens need 8½ to 9½ hours each night, to be alert and ready to learn all day. Lack of sleep is linked to decreased attentiveness, decreased short-term memory, inconsistent performance, and delayed response time.
5. Instill Organizational Skills
Although we teach organizational and time-management skills at TCFL, students can benefit from parental guidance at home. Some strategies are:
- Help students keep papers in notebooks and binders. Check regularly to make sure backpacks are organized and neat.
- Create a calendar to help children remember upcoming deadlines and plan their time. Include non-academic commitments too.
- Help students make daily, prioritized to-do lists.
- Provide a well-lit, quiet, orderly workspace. You can remind your child that when it comes to studying and homework, multitasking is a time-waster. Working in an environment free of distractions like TV and texts works best.
6. Offer Help With Studying
As students get older they will need to study for exams. Since grades really count in high school, planning for studying is crucial for success, particularly when your teen's time is taken up with extracurricular activities.
Remind your child that studying on a daily basis is more effective than cramming at the last minute. Remind your teen to take notes in class, organize them by subject, and review them at home.Most parents still need to help their teen with organization and studying — don't think that teens can do this on their own just because they're in high school!
7. Report Bullying
TCFL works hard to create a supportive environment for students. We teach students to treat each other respectfully. However, bothering and bullying may still happen. We ask parents to let us know if they hear about any disrespectful behaviors. This allows us to look into and deal with situations before they escalate. Bullying via text or social media should be reported to the school too. By working together we can minimize bullying and help our students feel safe at school.
8. Take Attendance Seriously
Students should take a sick day if they have a fever, are nauseated, vomiting, or have diarrhea. Otherwise, it's important that they arrive at school on time every day, because having to catch up with class work, projects, tests, and homework can be stressful and interfere with learning.
Children may have many reasons for not wanting to go to school — bullies, difficult assignments, low grades, social problems, or issues with classmates or teachers. Talk with your child — and then perhaps with an administrator or school counselor — to find out more about what's causing any anxiety.
Students also may be late to school due to sleep problems. Keeping your child on a consistent daily sleep schedule can help avoid tiredness and tardiness.
9. Make Time to Talk
Staying connected with your child can be challenging in our fast paced world. As students get older new interests, and expanding social circles become central to their lives.; however. parents and guardians are still their anchors for providing love, guidance, and support.
Make an effort to talk with your child every day, so he or she knows that what goes on at school is important to you. When students know their parents are interested in their academic lives, they'll take school seriously as well.
Keeping the lines of communication open during elementary school, will help your children feel safe speaking to you. When teens know they can talk openly with their parents, the challenges of high school can be easier to face.
Supporting Your Secondary Student
Empower Your Teen
We do not shelter students from academic challenge, but equip them to utilize resources in order to learn. Help empower your child to follow these steps:
1st Step: Encourage your child to meet with teachers during the school day
- Come prepared with questions and/or assignments to work on- for extra accountability.
- Encourage your child to stay after school for study hall.
2nd Step: Access Resources at Home
- Google Classroom- Teachers use this to communicate changes to assignments, post pictures of class notes, provide quick feedback on assignments and post additional resources used during class and resources for further exploration. Students will log in with their TCFL email address.
- Encourage your teen to email the teacher to ask questions when necessary. Teachers will respond and give feedback.
3rd Step: Connect with Teacher
- If there is an ongoing concern, request a student, parent, teacher conference: It helps to involve the student's and teacher's voices at the same time.
Healthy Teen Links