Standard 4

Educators value the involvement and support of parents, guardians, families, and communities in schools.

Standard 4 involves the support of parents and guardians in schools and their communities. This means that parents and/or guardians should be present in their child’s school and extended community. That could be through volunteering in some capacity, organizing an event, or participating in a field trip. Depending on family dynamics, one way to be involved could be as simple as reading the newsletter that goes out so that you know what is happening or working with your child outside of school on things like literacy and numeracy. To me, this standard means that I can rely on parents to build a community with my class and have their support in extending the students learning at home.

The artefact that I am providing for this standard is my game instructions for the math game night we participated in at Quinson Elementary. I made a game intended for the K/1 curriculum and it is based around being able to make sums of 10. The game is called Pyramid and the objective is to complete the pyramid by making sums of 10 using two cards. Students were only allowed to pick up cards that were completely uncovered to make their sum of 10. For example, 6+4=10 and 7+3=10.

My game connects to the standard because we had to bring our games to Quinson Elementary for their math night. This was a night intended for parents to come out and learn some new math games that can easily be played at home with accessible materials. There were a variety games meant for kindergarten up to grade 7, and most could be adapted to different grade levels so there was something for everyone. The parents brought their kids with them to play the games and most people enjoyed learning how to play them. Some of the parents got more excited than the kids! At the end of the night the parents got to take a bag full of dice, cards, counters and some instructions so that they could play all of the games at home with their kids. This is an example of the value that parents and guardians have for educators because they can go home and play these games with their kids to increase their numeracy abilities. The community of educators and parents or guardians at Quinson came together to make this happen with the common goal of furthering students learning.