Family Engagement Toolkit

Awareness Activities

Awareness Activities from the Transition Basics Toolkit are your first steps. If you or any team members have not completed the Family Engagement: Awareness Activities in the Transition Basics toolkit, begin with those now. Those activities are self-paced and prepare individuals to engage as a team. Once you have completed those, move to the next set of activities in Extend Your Knowledge.

Extend Your Knowledge

Reflect. Review your team discussion and notes from the Awareness Activities in the Transition Basics Toolkit. Focus on the questions in the Notetaking Form about Family Engagement.

Watch. How Can Universal Design for Learning Revive Our Family Engagement? (5 minutes). The video has ’Jump in Points’. Jump in at 7:48 ’UDL for Family Engagement’ and watch until 12:30 to hear Dr. Barbara Boone from The Ohio State University Statewide Family Engagement Center talk about applying the UDL Principles to Family Engagement.

Watch. Journey webinar titled Practices to Enhance Family Engagement (40 minutes). Scroll down till you find the webinar title. It will be from September 27, 2021. The video includes the previous information about the four forms of family engagement plus other research to consider. It also introduces the Glows and Grows Assessment you will be using next.

Review. Glows and Grows Assessment. As a team, complete the Glows and Grows Assessment to assess your school’s consistent and school-wide implementation of the Essential Characteristics of Family Engagement with every family. Be sure to touch on each Essential Characteristic and document what your school or even a single teacher is doing with their families. Your current practices will go in the Glow column.

As you think of ways to Grow your school’s use of the Essential Characteristics, combine what you’ve learned from the Journey: Shortcut and Universal Design for Family Engagement videos. How can you find multiple ways to communicate, inform, empower, and prepare your families when Growing your family engagement practices?

Save. Document the discussion in your Glows and Grows Assessment and save them for your next steps below – Applying Your Knowledge and developing Next Steps for implementation.

Apply Your Knowledge

Application. Congratulations! Your team has finished some great learning of family engagement research and strategies. Review your completed Glows and Grows Assessment. Prioritize two or three of the Essential Characteristics to Grow in your school. This may be developing school-wide strategies for all families or focused strategies for specific families.

Document your Next Steps on the Action Plan.

Examples of Possible Next Steps:

Develop a set of ways to communicate information to families using no tech, low tech, and high-tech options blended with in-person opportunities.
Collaborate with a local family organization or parent mentor to help connect families with families who have recently graduated and experienced the transition planning process.
Develop multiple strategies and ways in each category of the four forms of family engagement for families to support their child’s education and transition plan

Ongoing Team Meetings

Sustainability

Review the results of the activities identified in Next Steps.
Add Family Engagement as an ongoing agenda item for your Core Team meetings.
Identify and review the ongoing efforts that will be made to improve and sustain your family engagement strategies across your school.

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