My #Artsmark20 story: Parental engagement beyond the pandemic

Christ Church Primary School is centred in Oldbury in the West Midlands. They are a two-form entry school in a diverse catchment area with children from many religions but predominantly Christian, Muslim and Sikh.

Despite the challenges various lockdowns posed, Christ Church were thrilled to see how well parents engaged with online learning, becoming more involved with their children’s education and in turn, changing the school’s approach to learning on the whole. Year 3 teacher and arts lead, Jodie O’Neill explains.

Adapting to online learning

When the first lockdown hit in 2020, we initially struggled with online learning and how it would look for our children. A lot of our families had no way to access the work as they didn’t own a device or had to share one between many family members. We found that the children interacted most with the more creative tasks, and they could use mobile phones or tablets to record the evidence.

This led us to change our approach and try to make tasks more open ended. For example, in my year 3 class, children were asked to research British weather, and many chose to record this as a weather report on their phones, giving them a chance to demonstrate their presenting skills, and they posted them on Google Classroom. In one piece, the parents were actually throwing water and cotton balls into the video to imitate the weather types which really made me appreciate the efforts of the parents!

Parental engagement

By making the tasks more child led and less prescriptive, we found the response from the parents to be more positive. Overnight, parents were expected to become teachers and they were struggling, we acknowledged that, but by developing more creative tasks, it allowed parents to have fun with their children and think outside the box. It took the pressure off them trying to be the ‘teacher’. One parent commented, “we really looked forward to the tasks where we could be more creative as we could have fun together as a family. It really lifted our spirits.”

Returning to ‘normal’

Now that schools have returned to a more normal way of teaching, it’s become really evident how much our pupils have missed out on. Not only in English and Maths, but also the fun, creative days, the cultural trips and having the opportunity to express themselves. Now more than ever, it’s important to give them a chance to shine! Here at Christ Church, we have really begun to adapt our way of thinking. We have developed curriculum teams that are collaborating on enriching the curriculum, ensuring the arts are a critical way for our children to learn and grow.

We’ve taken on board our parent’s approach to home learning, which has now been revamped. We give our children open-ended projects, which parents can support with, based around our school ethos, SHINE, which is to create successful, happy, inclusive and enriched learners.

The biggest lesson I have learnt from the pandemic, is that by having more in-depth conversations with parents, and sharing our views and experiences, it creates a more cohesive learning environment, whether at home or in school!