Education Ministry to engage parents in targeted training

Parents across Region Four are to benefit from targeted training sessions this academic year, to help strengthen literacy and numeracy skills among students, says Regional Director at the Ministry of Education, Skills, Youth and Information, Dr Michele Pinnock.

“We are going to be doing a lot of parent training to really get the parents aware as to how they can support the reading and literacy while at home. We will be having some capacity building for the parents, meaning we’ll be having some online meetings in the afternoon,” Pinnock told JIS News.

She explained that parents will be taught practical strategies to employ while supporting their children.

“We show them what it is that they can be doing in terms of labelling some things in the home, in terms of asking questions, how to structure questions in such a way that you don’t just get one answer, but you’re getting answers in sentences and also questions that will cause our children to think,” she noted.

She added that parents will be introduced to technology-based solutions.

“For example, in terms of the tablets or the telephone, we’re showing them other things that they can be getting their children to use. So instead of playing games…we are going to be showing our parents, an app called Read Along, whereby that app will allow the child to read to the app, and the app gives you some feedback in terms of the reading itself,” Pinnock said.

She pointed out that numeracy will also be of critical focus in encouraging parental support.

“For the math, we’re going to be focusing specifically on making sure that we move from the concrete to the abstract. So, we want to be able to use up our manipulatives so that our children can understand varied concepts, because what we note is that sometimes you have those children who fail to understand concepts,” she said.

Pinnock further stated that authentic learning will be emphasized in the training sessions.

“You want to be able to show them what you mean. You want to be able to talk about tens and ones and show them practically and of course, push that into the business of what we call authentic learning, meaning they’re able to see practical application in everyday life,” the regional director explained.

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