EYFS: A Guide to Launching Ladders at Home in the Foundation Stage
Welcome! You've decided to launch Ladders at Home in your school as part of your whole school approach to parental engagement and with a wealth of research showing the benefits of ongoing, consistent parental engagement, there has never been a better time to embark on this launch.
“The effect of parental engagement over a student’s school career is equivalent to adding two or three years to that student’s education.”
John Hattie
This guide provides all you need to implement Ladders at Home in EYFS; from time saving letter proformas, to pre-designed guides to send out to your parents.
Step 1: Discuss your parental engagement settings for Ladders at Home
"Parental engagement is successful when treated as part of a whole school strategy-not a bolt on activity" (Desforges and Abouchaar, 2003)
Step 1 of launching involves engaging in conversations with Senior Leaders and other teams to provide a consistent approach to communicating with parents.
Click on 'Ladders at Home' on the green menu bar to view the settings for Ladders at Home. This is a good basis for starting these conversations.
Only admin users are able to access the settings tab in Ladders at Home. EYFS and KS1+ have separate settings for Ladders at Home
Observation Settings
Sharing observations with parents provides immediate feedback about what their child is learning in school. Learning Ladders has reviewed the research that shows better conversations about learning are achieved when communication with parents is ongoing throughout the year.
Watch this video to learn about the sharing options for observations in the EYFS module, or read this support article.
Ladders at Home Features and Modules Settings
Watch this video to find out more about the settings for Ladders at Home in the Early Years module.
Two Way Communication Settings
The Two-way communication tool supports practitioners in delivering the overarching principles set out in the Statutory Framework for the early years Foundation Stage 2021, 1.16 'The key person must seek to engage and support parents and/or carers in guiding their child’s development at home'.
Step 2: Communicate the Launch to your Parents
For genuine partnerships to exist between teachers and parents, Learning Ladders encourage schools to share their parental engagement approach and ethos for collaborating in supporting learning.
To support and minimise the burden on teacher workloads, we have developed a range of documents for parents to communicate the launch of Ladders at Home:
Parental Engagement Pledge (editable document, with the ability to personalise with school names and features used)
Parent Guide (email this parent guide to your parents to support parents in using Ladders at Home)
Ladders at Home Parent Presentation (an editable presentation to use in a parent information session)
Step 3: Import Parents
We have developed straightforward processes for importing parents into Ladders at Home.
There are three options for importing parents:
Step 4: Invite Parents
Experience shows us that communicating with parents to expect an invite, along with supporting information on how to register, leads to a greater number of parents registering successfully.
To support you in communicating the registration process we have developed the below resources:
Registration Parent Letter- An editable proforma for communicating the invitation process to your parents
EYFS Parent Guide for Ladders at Home- An editable word document with links to support videos for parents
How to invite parents to Ladders at Home- An article explaining how to invite parents to Ladders at Home
Step 5: Share observations with parents
The Early Years Framework 2021 seeks to provide ongoing communication between practitioners and with parents and/or carers:
2.3. Parents and/or carers should be kept up-to-date with their child’s progress and
development'
development'
For information about sharing observations with parents watch this video or read about Learning Ladders' observation features here or a technical guide for sharing an observation here.
Step 6: Share home learning tasks with parents
Watch this video for more information about sharing home learning tasks in EYFS or read a guide here.
Step 7: Support parents using Articles
Watch this video for more information about using Articles to support parents, or read a guide here.
Step 8: Ask parents for feedback
Research by Desforges and Abouchaar (2003) concludes that regular reviews from parents is a key factor for success when delivering parental engagement strategies.
Feedback will shape your continued use of Ladders at Home and refine the use to ensure your parental engagement is based on your own parents' needs.
For any other questions about launching Ladders at Home in your School, contact the team at support@learningladders.info
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EYFS: Ladders at Home - Inviting Parents
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