Powerful Family Partnerships in Detroit Public Schools
Building Stronger Family Partnerships with ReadyRosie and The Creative Curriculum Playlists
Strong partnerships with families are an essential part of any high-quality early childhood education program, but as everyone knows, that’s been a particular challenge this year. Programs have had to reimagine their family engagement strategy and teachers have had to work harder than ever to build the connections between school and home.
With a wide array of tools devoted to building strong, reciprocal relationships with families, Teaching Strategies is continually striving to strengthen the connections and communications between those tools.
We recently made an exciting step toward further alignment between ReadyRosie and The Creative Curriculum when we launched new playlists that map to studies. This makes it easier than ever for teachers using The Creative Curriculum to share with families ReadyRosie™ Modeled Moments that are directly aligned with their classroom instruction and experiences.
The Missing Puzzle Piece
We asked Anya Leavy and Andrea Yesta, two early childhood teachers from Detroit Public Schools who have been teaching remotely since March, how ReadyRosie and the new The Creative Curriculum playlists have helped them engage with families during this difficult year.
“ReadyRosie is the missing puzzle piece that helps the parents understand what we’re doing in our curriculum, and how to transfer the knowledge that we’re teaching and apply it at home with their child. The videos are so deeply rich in objectives and content—they’re just perfect,” said Anya.
The families in their programs love that ReadyRosie helps children learn through real-life experiences that are already happening all around them. “[W]hen I send ReadyRosie videos to families, it’s enriching things they’re already doing with learning—it’s not expecting them to be teachers. They LOVE this tool,” said Andrea.
Easy for Educators, Easy for Families
New The Creative Curriculum playlists made it even easier for Andrea and Anya to send relevant ReadyRosie content to families “because they’re aligned to the studies we’re currently working on but Teaching Strategies has done the work for us. It’s so refreshing to have a company that takes the load off of us because we need that right now. We are struggling and this really helps.,” said Anya.
Andrea agreed, “When I first saw the playlists—I was so excited—all I had to do was click on the week that we’re on. It’s easy for me, it’s easy for families—that’s what it needs to be right now with us all teaching from home. It needs to be easy.”
Families can comment on the ReadyRosie Modeled Moment video to provide insight on how their child responded to the activity, allowing teachers to capture family observations in GOLD and individualize instruction back in the classroom.
“I send The Creative Curriculum playlist which is already aligned to our study, and when parents comment in ReadyRosie, I use that information to populate family observations in GOLD…it’s so easy,” said Andrea.
Reinforcing Classroom Learning at Home
And Andrea’s starting to see the positive impacts that these resources, all working together, have on child outcomes.
“I can tell that my kids have increased their vocabulary because ReadyRosie is reinforcing what they’re learning in the classroom at home with their families. They understand the concept because they’ve already applied it. I’ve taught it, they’ve applied at home with a ReadyRosie Modeled Moment video, then when we come back and revisit it, they’re able to retell it to me again because they understand it.”
If you’re a teacher who is using The Creative Curriculum and ReadyRosie, you can check out the new playlists here. Simply select the appropriate The Creative Curriculum playlist and share it with families—all of the hard work is done for you!
