Parent involvement in children's language and literacy development is a continuum. Parents enhance their newborn baby's language and vocabulary growth, whereas with older children parents are involved in school and provide support by engaging in learning activities such as assisting with homework. Parent involvement is an important part of…

Interactive Literacy Activities, or ILAs, broadly refer to activities that facilitate interaction between adults and children for the purpose of promoting literacy and language development. It is essential to make ILAs developmentally and culturally appropriate for children and to use an approach that integrates various activities in order to…

Background information is provided on gifted students with learning disabilities and/or physical impairments. The need for collaborative interventions to meet the needs of these students is discussed, viewing collaboration as personal interaction, as the interaction of roles, and as interinstitutional interaction. A collaborative/consultation…

The article describes nontraditional forms of parent-teacher interaction including using computer software programs to generate messages, telephones or phone answering machines with recorded messages, aides and paraprofessionals, and the Passport (a spiral notebook carried by the child in which teachers write notes). (DB)

The communication processes involved in parent/teacher or parent/teacher/student conferences are addressed in this booklet. Noting that teachers handle most conferences without difficulty, the booklet concentrates on "problem situations," such as when parents and teachers disagree, when misunderstandings occur, or when a student is not performing…

Cooperative learning is a generic classroom technique that requires students to work and talk together about academic material while learning effective interpersonal skills. This packet, prepared in conjunction with the Minnesota School Effectiveness Program, describes the benefits of cooperative learning and defines its critical attributes,…

Focuses on recognizing key indicators for developing teamwork and collaboration among child care staff. Addresses communicating clearly, interacting respectfully, demonstrating trust, negotiating different perspectives, building on each other's strengths, and promoting reliability and responsibility. Identifies strategies to cultivate growth in…

This book provides useful guidelines for implementing collaborative decision making in the public educational system. The prologue presents the historical background of educational reform in the United States and offers a rationale for radical school reform at the individual school level. The nine chapters that follow are divided into three parts.…

One of the organizational characteristics used in the Minnesota School Effectiveness Program is a positive school climate, which includes collaborative planning and collegial relationships. This module begins by identifying four types of collegial practices that characterize successful schools: (1) frequent, continuous, and increasingly precise…