Using Technology in your Home-School Link. · 1. Get social! Use social media to communicate with...
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Using Technology in your Home-School Link. By Aimee Bates, editor and author Part 4 of a series of 12 of Macmillan’s Home-School Link PART 1 Top 5 ways of communicating using technology: 1. Get social! Use social media to communicate with parents: start discussions, get feedback and get interactive. Consider tweeting achievements and news or posting them in a school group on a social network. 2. Start a class or school blog. This is a great way for teachers to display and share work or class videos and for parents to comment. Why not ask parents to author some blog posts to show you value their views and opinions? 3. Set up a text-messaging system. Make sure parents always get news by setting up and using a text messaging system – send alerts to parents including ‘Happy Holidays’! 4. Set up a private area for parents on your school website. Are you using your school website to communicate with parents? Set up a private area for parents where they can login and view news about their child’s class and progress. 5. Don’t forget about the telephone! Calling parents with good news shows a personal interest in the development of their child. Other ways technology can help: 1. When you send emails to parents, create a group in your contacts list so you can easily send an email to all the parents at the same time. (Make sure you enter the group in the ‘bcc’ line so that parents can’t see each other’s email addresses.) This is really useful for sending information about the syllabus, home work, trips, work for the holidays, school events etc. 2. You could request a read receipt with your email so that you can see when a parent has read an email. 3. Don’t forget, if you are ever unsure about how to do something technical, the internet usually has the answer! Look it up in an internet search engine and there is sure to be someone else who has encountered the same problem! 4. If your English course has digital student books, practice kits, eBooks or apps, make use of them in the classroom to encourage learning at home. © Macmillan Publishers Limited 2016 Downloaded from www.macmillanyounglearners.com/resources www.m cmill nyounglearners.com
Transcript of Using Technology in your Home-School Link. · 1. Get social! Use social media to communicate with...
Using Technology in your Home-School Link. By Aimee Bates, editor and author Part 4 of a series of 12 of Macmillan’s Home-School Link
PART 1
Top 5 ways of communicating using technology:
1. Get social! Use social media to communicate with parents: start discussions, get feedback and get interactive. Consider tweeting achievements and news or posting them in a school group on a social network.
2. Start a class or school blog. This is a great way for teachers to display and share work or class videos and for parents to comment. Why not ask parents to author some blog posts to show you value their views and opinions?
3. Set up a text-messaging system. Make sure parents always get news by setting up and using a text messaging system – send alerts to parents including ‘Happy Holidays’!
4. Set up a private area for parents on your school website. Are you using your school website to communicate with parents? Set up a private area for parents where they can login and view news about their child’s class and progress.
5. Don’t forget about the telephone! Calling parents with good news shows a personal interest in the development of their child.
Other ways technology can help:
1. When you send emails to parents, create a group in your contacts list so you can easily send an email to all the parents at the same time. (Make sure you enter the group in the ‘bcc’ line so that parents can’t see each other’s email addresses.) This is really useful for sending information about the syllabus, home work, trips, work for the holidays, school events etc.
2. You could request a read receipt with your email so that you can see when a parent has read an email.
3. Don’t forget, if you are ever unsure about how to do something technical, the internet usually has the answer! Look it up in an internet search engine and there is sure to be someone else who has encountered the same problem!
4. If your English course has digital student books, practice kits, eBooks or apps, make use of them in the classroom to encourage learning at home.
© Macmillan Publishers Limited 2016Downloaded from www.macmillanyounglearners.com/resources
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PART 2
Technology: From the classroom to the home...
Today’s students are often required to be digitally literate so it’s important to make technology an integral part of the learning process. If you embrace technology, there are many benefits. Technology helps:
make learning more fun
prepare students for the future
students retain information
students learn at their own pack
engage parents in their child’s learning.
Why use technology at home?
Parents can help their child to get the most out of the digital components in their language course in the following ways:
- review target language with their child by looking carefully at presentation language
together
- practise target language using audio by listening and repeating what they hear
- sing songs at home to reinforce vocabulary and sentence structure
- use vocabulary and presentation language to play simple games
Macmillan’s digital courses
Macmillan courses have the added benefit of technology that can be used in the classroom or at home in the form of apps, student practice kits, digital student books and eBooks. These will help students get ahead of the game and prepare for their next steps in life.
They work on a range of devices from phones and tablets to laptops and PCs. Some of their features include:
1. Integrated audio to help pronunciation - availablein most digital components.
2. Mark-up tools that enable children to doactivities at home with parents, make notes orwrite on the digital pages.
3. Music is one of the best ways to learn vocabularyand all course songs are included in studentpractice kits.
4. Interactive activities in practice kits and digitalstudent books create exciting learningopportunities.
Macmillan Apps
Macmillan’s free apps are easy to install and navigate. The games are motivating and engaging, and are a great way for children to share their learning at home with parents whilst practising and consolidating their English skills.
Visit http://www.macmillaneducationapps.com for more information and instructions on how to download.
© Macmillan Publishers Limited 2016Downloaded from www.macmillanyounglearners.com/resources
Home-SchoolLink
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CMYK Values:C: 0M: 91%Y: 87%K: 0
MYL Logo : Long & CMYK print version
** Note: Do not mix the colour options together. The logo should always appear either in white with one of these four colours as a background, or, in one of these four colours on a white background. ie. Do not put the red logo on a green background.
......................................................................................................................................................
......................................................................................................................................................
......................................................................................................................................................
......................................................................................................................................................
Red Logo
-------------------------------
CMYK Values:C: 0M: 43%Y: 99%K: 0
......................................................................................................................................................
Orange Logo
-------------------------------
CMYK Values:C: 66%M: 0 Y: 100%K: 0
......................................................................................................................................................
Green Logo
-------------------------------
CMYK Values:C: 69%M: 99%Y: 7%K: 0
Purple Logo
** IMPORTANT NOTE: The above alignment is the preferred option, however when there is no alternative but display the logo at a small size, the below alignment is the correct use. This is to make sure the text ‘Mac-millan’ is readable. (This is the alignment used on the MYL website brand micro-sites).
Display with alignment size and position of the ‘Macmillan’ text as shown left when logo must be displayed at a small size.
www.m cmill nyounglearners.com
Find the rest of Macmillan’s Home- School Link articles, quizzes and top tips at:
www.macmillanyounglearners.com /home-school-link .
