She also figures out how to reach parents, including who is available at work or at home. Riddle says she has received a great deal of positive feedback based on these early contacts. She also points out that sometimes parents take advantage of these initial conversations with the teacher to talk about serious family issues. Connecting at Open House Another strategy that Riddle recommends for engaging parents in the math program occurs early in the school year at open house. In her school, children visit the classroom with their parents.
Riddle sets up the event so that the students are tour guides.
She asks them to plan what they will place on display, and they all look for projects that will be interesting and engaging for parents. The students arrange the room, and Riddle makes sure they understand that part of their job is to introduce their parents to her. One of Riddle's favorite open house displays comes from a unit in the innovative curriculum Investigations in Number, Data, and Space . In the lesson, the students take cubes and build imaginative objects that they later use to practice estimations. These creations are on display at the open house, along with students' written explanations of how they figured out the number of cubes in the object without counting all of them.