Family Engagement
At ANet, we know that as a child’s primary decision-maker and first and forever teacher, families should have meaningful access to information and avenues to support their child’s learning and development. We also know that teaching and learning is resource-intensive. The compilation below aims to slim down a suggested list of essential tools to support your school’s family engagement strategy.
Family Engagement Support Resources
Share Grade-Level Expectations
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Two & four-page guides, in English and Spanish, detailing what to expect in high school. Includes activities to support at home and tips for talking with teachers.
Tips for Implementation: Reference this guide during family interactions to discuss how their teen is progressing with respect to grade-level expectations. Offer space for questions.
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Easy-to-read guides, in English and Spanish, detailing what to expect in grades K-8. Includes activities to support at home, tips for talking with teachers, and links to online resources.
Tips for Implementation: Select a grade-appropriate guide to send to a family; reference this during interactions to discuss how their student is progressing with respect to grade-level expectations.
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Two-minute videos of teachers and students (K-12), unpacking what students should be able to do in reading, writing, and math each year.
Tips for Implementation: Select a grade-appropriate video to send directly to a family to strengthen home connections and empower the family to work collaboratively with teachers.
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A fun online quiz for students to take allows families to get a gut check on how their child is doing with key math and reading skills.
Tips for Implementation: After a quiz, use these accessible data points as a starting place for a family conversation about grade-level expectations. Provide personal insights to motivate families around a vision for what their student should know and be able to do.
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Family Engagement Support Resources
Demystify Assessment Data
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This two-minute video features a leadership team describing a tool they designed to share data from multiple assessments with families.
Tips for Implementation: Watch this video in PLCs to spark ideas on how current assessment data is shared with families, considering the “why” behind the numbers.
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A one-pager with the elements of effective feedback and tips for communicating formative assessment results with families.
Tips for Implementation: In PLCs, use this framework to plan how to share feedback with families. Try practicing in real time and then honing your language based on these suggestions.
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An overview of all types of ANet assessments, their purpose, and how to receive the results. Also in Spanish or in our marketing version.
Tips for Implementation: Before giving your next ANet interim, send this guide to families. Additionally, share some details on how you’ll be using the information to support each student.
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Individual student reports for each interim, including standards with the student’s highest and lowest performance. Reports include links to online lessons for more practice. Here you can see a math sample.
Tips for Implementation: ANet’s reports should be just one part of the feedback you share with families each quarter. Consider pairing these with the engaging math or literacy ideas in the sections below.
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Family Engagement Support Resources
Provide Meaningful Math Experiences at Home
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Simple daily prompts that ask students to estimate a quantity based on a photo.
Tips for Implementation: Families can spend a few minutes each day solving a task in order to build students’ number sense.
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A set of 80 open-ended math questions based on real-world situations.
Tips for Implementation: Share one challenge weekly or monthly with families. Direct families to come up with solutions together.
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A collection of K-5 videos that clearly illustrate math models and visuals for building understanding.
Tips for Implementation: Families and teachers can watch these videos to understand where students are developmentally and get ideas for strategies to move them along the learning progression.
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A blog containing ideas for math projects and discussions based on everyday objects found at home.
Tips for Implementation: Share ideas weekly or monthly with families, aligned with what’s being taught in class.
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A set of pictures to discuss daily with students. Pictures come with a range of questions appropriate to what K-5 students should be learning.
Tips for Implementation: Share with families to give them a starting point for talking about math with their kids and model grade-appropriate questions to ask.
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A blog post that explains why the math students do now might look different from what older family members remember from school.
Tips for Implementation: Share this article to build investment in working with teachers to understand conceptual methods of learning math.
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Family Engagement Support Resources
Provide Meaningful Literacy Experiences at Home
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Easy-to-read guides detailing what to expect in each grade (K-5), including activities to support at home, and tips for talking with teachers.
Tips for Implementation: Great for conferences. Review these guides together with families to help them understand what their child should be learning in literacy.
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Free online decodable readers appropriate for grades K-2.
Tips for Implementation: Families can use these readers to support younger students as they practice becoming more fluent with sound/spelling patterns they are learning in school.
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A two-page overview of what children need to do across all grade-levels in order to read and how to help them do so.
Tips for Implementation: This article could be shared at the beginning of the year in a school newsletter to help families build their understanding of how children learn to read.
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A compilation of easy-to-digest articles with plenty of expert opinions, resource links, and action steps to support students’ literacy development.
Tips for Implementation: Share one of these articles as a follow-up to a conversation you may have had with a caregiver about literacy development, keeping the learning in context.
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A description of four evidence-based practices that caregivers can use at home to develop K-3 reading skills.
Tips for Implementation: During a 1:1 family conference, model a few strategies for caregivers and discuss when and where these might take place.
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Family Engagement Support Resources
Consider the Big Picture: A Holistic View of Supports
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This K-12 directory offers family members conversation starters, activities, book lists, and resource links to support anti-racist work.
Tips for Implementation: Pick a bite-sized step. Tell others you trust about your experience and next steps to build trust and accountability.
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A searchable library of short, diverse, and multigenre texts aligned with CCSS’ complexity recommendations and Teaching Tolerance’s Social Justice Standards.
Tips for Implementation: Send or post texts aligned to current units of study. Encourage students to read with family members at home and provide prompts or conversation starters.
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A collection of advice from various experts, answering the question: “How do I talk to kids who learn and think differently about racial injustice?”
Tips for Implementation: Include introspection space for yourself before engaging with families in learning together.
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A 40-minute webinar that addresses the need for newcomers’ home-school connections. It provides concrete tips and ideas.
Tips for Implementation: Most helpful for secondary leaders. Watch this with your leadership team and discuss ways to integrate strategies into your existing structures.
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This homepage provides tools for describing ELL status and services to families and activities for language development at home.
Tips for Implementation: For newer families to the school community, try using these translated flyers at a conference to explain the process of screening & identifying students as ELLs.
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A translated toolkit to help families choose education services that meet their child’s needs. Includes questions to ask school staff.
Tips for Implementation: Familiarize yourself with family and student rights to better equip yourself to partner with families within the school community.
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A helpful combination of apps to support rapid, live translation. The Snap feature instantly translates text or images using a phone’s camera.
Tips for Implementation: Helpful for in the moment translation needs, during conversations with families in person or online.
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An article and video that highlight Wolfe Street Academy and the lessons they’ve learned about strong partnerships, communication, and problem-solving.
Tips for Implementation: Try an article study with a colleague. Ask each other: What questions and reactions does this bring up for you? What changes might impact your own community?
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A brief guide outlining strategies for starting conversations with ELL families and making school more accessible.
Tips for Implementation: This is a good starting place. Start small; choose 1-2 of the strategies in the guide to implement at first.
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A four-step tool to help determine if the struggles you’re seeing a child experience might be signs of a learning & thinking difference.
Tips for Implementation: Educators and parents can collaborate using the four steps of the process: Notice, Observe, Talk, and Engage.
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A powerful collection including simulations, videos, and stories to show why learning & thinking differences can be frustrating. Simulations cover a wide range of subjects and skills in K-12.
Tips for Implementation: Experience struggling with reading, writing, math, attention, and/or organization; pay close attention to tone and body language as students share stories; share with families to spark conversation.
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A list of student strengths that may be less obvious, including categories like character, social, language, literacy, math, logic, study skills, and more.
Tips for Implementation: Helpful to have on hand when preparing for family conferences. A game-changer for students is being able to recognize, talk about, and build on strengths.
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A heartfelt essay by a teacher and parent of children who have learning & thinking differences describing what it’s like to engage in simulations mimicking executive functioning issues.
Tips for Implementation: Educators should read this to deepen empathy for parents of students who have learning & thinking differences. Then explore Through Your Child’s Eyes for yourself.
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Short videos including tips for learning at home to support families who have children with disabilities.
Tips for Implementation: Encourage families to subscribe for monthly updates and strategies to support their child at home.
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A toolkit with resources, rubrics, and activities for a two-way family partnership in supporting the social and emotional development of students.
Tips for Implementation: Parts of the downloadable discussion series can be used as a foundation for a back-to-school night or other family engagement experience.
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A checklist for families to use while planning household and remote schooling routines and procedures during school closures.
Tips for Implementation: Bring into a parent conference and finalize this checklist all together. Create specific examples and discuss what success would look like in each section.
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An extensive handbook with ideas for games to be played specifically at home due to school closures.
Tips for Implementation: Educators can model 1-2 games during class time and encourage students to play the same game with family members at home.
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An article listing 10 ways that parents can support social-emotional learning at home during the pandemic.
Tips for Implementation: Send to families if they have identified or asked for support at home in this area. As an educator, ask if you are implementing these tips too.
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Disclaimer: Many of these links take you to external organizations. It is your responsibility to ensure you comply with any copyright or permissions restrictions before using these materials.
Designing for EVERY Student
Our role as educators is to support each other toward accomplishing educational equity. Asking and answering the question “why does equitable instruction in math/literacy and all content areas matter to me/my students?” is important to build a vision of excellence and actively advance instruction toward that vision. These definitions are designed to support in that work.
To engage in building a vision of equity with your team, explore our Equitable Instruction Infographic and Equitable Instruction Definitions to learn more.
Educational Equity
A guarantee that educators engage ALL students with meaningful support that they need to reach and exceed a common standard through high-quality instruction.
Institutional Equity
Leadership, practices and culture that guarantee educators engage ALL students with meaningful support they need to meet and exceed a common standard through high-quality instruction.
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