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Parent Resources for Secondary Students
Write at home! Enlist the help of your students’ parents to encourage and
practice writing skills. Promote this fun “at home” activity:
- Writing Prompts for Different Intelligences
- Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences suggests that intelligence isn’t a single "thing," rather that there are many ways of being intelligent. His work examines how people learn and know the world differently. With your child, discuss what you each are good at, enjoy, and how you make sense of the world around you. Make a list of words that describe this discussion.
Take this learning inventory to determine what kind of learner you are.
Print out the chart and compare it to your list of words. Do they match? How do you think your learning preferences affect the way you write? How do your preferences influence which books you choose to read?
For a list of suggested writing prompts and activities for different intelligences, visit this page.
- Let's Go Green
- Sit down with your family and brainstorm ideas for ways that you can “go green.” Make a list of the ideas that you like the best and think that you might be able to realistically incorporate into your daily lives. Together, research options, Do It Yourself (DIY) directions, and local facilities that can support your efforts.
Write a "Green Contract" for your household that outlines what you intend to do, why it is important to you, and how you will accomplish your list. You might want to start small and gradually work towards bigger goals. If this is the case, create a timeline to help keep your family on track.
- Remembering Great Americans
- Sit down and talk to your children about great Americans during your lifetime. Together, decide what the qualities of such a person are. Then, choose a person with whom you and your child are familiar and evaluate his / her greatness based on your list.
Together, write about your impressions, opinions, and memories about this person.
Gather news articles, photographs, and other ‘realia’ to complement your writing. Create a coffee table book. Download Blurb Booksmart ™ free bookmaking software at Blurb, use another publishing application like Smilebox™ or Microsoft Publisher™ (both of which are available on-line as free downloads or as a 60-day free trial) or make your own book by entering “make your own book” in a search engine.
- Responsibility Project
- Visit the Responsibility Project (http://www.responsibilityproject.com/) and look at the “Stories” section (http://www.responsibilityproject.com/stories/) with your student. Define your positions on different types of responsibilities by selecting a story, viewing and rating others’ stories, and finally, submitting your own.
- Family Stories
- All children grow up listening to their families’ stories. These stories form the basis of our identities. Ask your children to recall their favorite family stories and memories. Share your favorite family stories. Tape record them or write them down. Illustrate these stories or find family photographs to accompany these stories.
Resources:
- Life After School
- It’s never too early to start preparing for life after school. Sit down with your son or daughter and write a resume. Start by compiling a list of his / her accomplishments, no matter how small they may seem. Students may not have ‘real’ job experiences, but babysitting, lawn work, informal apprenticeships with neighbors or grandparents, spelling bee championships, MVP awards, publication in school literary magazines, and other such accomplishments count! Keeping awards and certificates in a portfolio is a good habit to start now – it makes resume writing as an adult much easier.
Here are some resources that may be useful:
- Research Activities @ Home
- The practical aspects of efficient and effective research are far reaching. Everyday applications can be reinforced with engaging homework assignments. For example, ask families to plan a dream vacation together. Have students brainstorm categories and then assign each family member an aspect of the location to research, such as transportation, accommodations, dining, sites to visit, things to do, etc. Families can set up blogs where they can share the results of their research on a regular basis.
- Journaling in Fine Arts
- Maintain a personal journal/diary strictly used for responses, reactions, ideas, and thoughts after completing daily classes in fine arts (music, theater, dance, visual art, etc.). Be sure to include what you’ve discovered, what you’ve learned, what you question, what you predict, what you enjoyed, and what you disliked. Keeping this record will help you track patterns in your artistic development, as well as provide a resource for recalling techniques most effective in your learning/discovery process.
It is important to date each entry, and write as specifically as possible.
One more thing: try to write something, anything, each day!
- Using Writing to Support Social Studies and History
- Family car trips are popular summertime activities. Turn your road trip into a collaborative writing experience by documenting sites along the way, especially geographic features and historical markers. Maintain the journal as a vacation memory repository. Families interested in going high-tech could create podcasts or upload family photos and videos to a blog.
- Using Writing to Support Science
- Challenge your students to share these activities with their families:
- Introduce your family to a topic you are presently studying in your science class. Ask family members to write a question they have about the topic on the front of an index card. Research the answer and write the answer to their question in your own words on the back of the card. Return it to your family member.
- Using vocabulary words from your science class, make up index cards with a term on one side and the definition on the other side. Also, include the part of speech and a sentence using the term. Ask family members to draw a card and look only on the side with the word. Then, have them write their own definition on a piece of paper and a sentence including the word. The winner has the closest definition.
- Invite your family to view a movie related to a topic you are studying in science class. Write a “family review” to share with your teacher.
- Using Writing to Support Math
- At the secondary level it is important that children begin to learn that mathematicians spend a great deal of time writing, so writing clearly is as important a math skill as solving equations. Even if they don’t plan a career in math, in the future they will use their mathematical knowledge and will likely be called upon to explain their thinking to someone else. Writing clear mathematical explanations improves knowledge and understanding of the mathematical ideas they encounter. Putting an idea on paper requires careful thought and attention. Hence, mathematics that is written clearly and carefully is more likely to be correct. The process of writing helps students learn and retain the concepts explored in math classes. Encourage your children to write down a few statements about their math homework that reflects areas where they experienced difficulty or when ideas came together for them. Sharing these notes with the teacher may provide just the insight needed to get the student over the problem or get recognized.
Another activity that can be used easily with secondary level students (especially when they are asking for a raise in allowance) is to have them create a record of their income, expenditures and savings for one full month. Then have them write a justification, using their record to support their request for additional financial support.
- Create a Family Blog
- Students sometimes resist writing because they have decided either they are “no
 good at it” or that “it’s not really important.” Engaging and convincing your child that writing is a life skill is best done with parent involvement. Parents can demonstrate and highlight the ways in which writing is vital in their own personal and professional lives. Try establishing a family blog, where family members enter their thoughts or reactions to events of the day, or a special occasion. Make sure to respond, encourage and enjoy the sharing of ideas! You might get started using a site like www.blogger.com. For a short article about supporting writing conventions at home, "Supporting Writing Conventions at Home."
- Poetry in a Song
- Send families on a hunt for
poetic devices in song lyrics.
Students may be surprised at how
frequently figurative language
exists in their favorite tunes.
Challenge families to search for
similar themes in music from
different generations.
Suggestions:
- Send home a handout on different poetic devices,
including metaphors, alliteration, similes,
onomatopoeia, personification, and rhyme. (see
Scholastic link below, for a downloadable handout)
- Encourage families to share favorite songs with each
other, listening to and then reading the lyrics. Check
out: http://www.lyrics.com
Adapted from Ideas About Poetic Devices by Scholastic
- Read with Me Book Review
- Choose a book of interest to both student and parent.
Take turns reading aloud to each other discussing the book
after each chapter.
Parent and student should then write his/her own
book review, including information about the plot, setting,
characters, or theme. Support opinions with evidence from
the text.
For an added twist,
redesign the book’s cover
to include what each
reader sees as the most
important messages and
features of the book.
Source: http://www.nwp.org/cs/public/print/resource/807
- Family Photo Stories
- Peruse your family album and select a photo that shows details of action, dress, or scenery (rather than a formal portrait). Brainstorm, with all family members, a list of colorful descriptors, including outrageous adjectives and adverbs evoked by the image. Using input from all, write a descriptive paragraph to accurately describe the scene. Take the photo and paragraph to school to compare with other’s efforts.
visit other parent writing resources:
- Parent Resources by Grade Level
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- Articles that Support Parental Involvement
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