This can benefit students by giving their academic learning relevance in terms of their home environments and community. While many school programs exist to inform parents of school procedures and activities, parental involvement as outlined in this article builds upon parents' knowledge and experiences and on their roles as community members. These enrich, enhance, and extend students' academic learning. This article suggests ways to establish links to home and community and identifies two areas of activities which support these links. Teachers may wish to emphasize to parents that they do not need to be familiar with the language their child is studying and that parents can participate in a number of ways, many of which are low or no cost.
Parents play an important role in making links between school and home.
For example, children's interviews of parents can encourage parents and students to explore language and culture within their own homes. Students and teacher can work together to design oral interviews exploring parents' experiences with language learning and other cultures, including those being studied in the class. Tell me about it. The data from these interviews can be used in class in a variety of activities, including reporting to the class orally, writing up the results of the interview, and creating visuals. Parents can also play a valuable role in helping their children explore and become involved in their community's linguistic and cultural worlds.