Ten Tips for Involving Families through Internet-Based Communication

The research is clear that a family's involvement in their child's early education improves outcomes in areas such as the child's language, self-help, social, and motor skills. The more frequent the contact between home and school, the more the child benefits. While traditional forms of home-school partnerships (for example, parents participating in class activities and teachers sending home children's work) are associated with positive results, they are limited in their ability to effectively reach all families. Some children divide their time between two households as a result of divorce, and some parents cannot volunteer in the classroom due to daytime work hours. In such cases, teachers need to use different methods of home-program communication. A variety of Internet-based communication methods exist to help increase the frequency and outreach of communication between families and early childhood programs. In this article, the authors recommend strategies used successfully in classrooms. All the methods emphasize two-way communication. Unlike one-way communication approaches, in which families are merely informed of their child's progress, two-way communication approaches invite parents to participate in their child's learning process, thus creating an ongoing dialogue between home and program.