Michele L.

Scott
Culturally Responsive Classroom
PowerPoint
EDU647: Families Communities &
Diversity
(MTT1506A)
Instructor: SilviaGraham
03/16/2015

Culturally Responsive Classroom

Collabora
tion

Educators, who take the time to

get acquainted with parents, to
listen to them, to empathize with
their perspective, and to learn
from them about their child and
their home culture promote the
successful learning of all their
students and enhance their own
ability to reach and teach each of
their students ( Weiss, Caspe, &
Lopez, 2006 ).
Amatea, E. S. (2013). Building culturally responsive family-school
relationships (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson
Education, Inc.

Collaborative activities in the

classroom are some of the most
effective means for increased
conceptual gains and
enjoyment of the learning task
(M. Cooper, 1999; Summers, J.
J., Beretvas, S. N., Svinicki, M.
D., & Gorin, J. S. (2005).

It is shown that if teacher involve parents in classroom activities with their children,
there will be a better chance for academics success.
According to research, "Parents' educational involvement has been defined in a
number of ways, but has consistently been shown to positively affect children's
achievement, regardless of its form" TOREN, N. K. (2013).

A Cultural Education

According to the text, Amatea, E. S. (2013) contextualized instruction builds on what children
know and motivates them to keep learning, the text also points out three different levels of
learning in contextualized instruction:
Teaching strategy--Relating conceptual material to material that students have already
experienced.
Curriculum level--Contextualized curriculum that must be "culturally relevant."
Policy level--School learning" is one where the whole community is affected.

 Inviting parents to participate in classroom activities will help the child feel
very comfortablebecause their parent is interacting with the teacher.
Communicating and collaborating with the parents will ensure that everyone
is on one accord in the child's education.
Teachers can hold parent/teacher conferences to keep parentsinformed on
how their childrenare doing in different subject areas.
Parents can volunteer their time for fieldtrips, school functions, watch the
classroom in absence of the teacher. There are so many ways to implement
family involvement, the number one thing to do is to connect with the
parents, because they really want to be involved in their children's education,
but sometimes they don't know if the teachers would approve of them taking

Collaborative Family-School Problem

Solving

The SOLVES problem-solving approach is

based on four philosophical principles
common to other joint problem-solving
approaches ( Christenson & Hirsch, 1998).

The six steps in conducting family-school problem solving is very

important in making sure that family and school's concerns are
implemented with an action plan that will be organized and
processed. According to (Amatea, E. S. 2013) there are six
problem solving steps:
1. Setting up the meeting and preparing the student and family
2. Opening the meeting, orienting to meeting purpose and
process, and introducing participants
3. Listening to participants concerns and blocking blame
4. Validating concerns and creating consensus about meeting
goals
5. Expanding solution ideas
6. Setting up and implementing the action plan and follow-up
( Amatea, E. S. 2013).

Individualized education program (IEP) is a special education legal document that will focus on the learning needs
of a student. This document will be created by a special team of people, including the parents who will get together and
create the best plan to meet the child's learning needs through out the year. The IEP will include "special services" that
will help track the progress of the student.
In implementing an IEP meeting, these suggestions will ensure teachers are culturally sensitive to every family.
Changes must not be made to an IEP ,unless a meeting is held to address the change.
Services, tools and time agreement which was established in the IEP document must be available for the student at all
times. Communication and understanding to diverse cultures must be established to help families feel comfortable in
interacting with the teacher about their children.

Amatea, E. S. (2013). Building culturally responsive

family-school relationships (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle
River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc.
M. Cooper, 1999; Summers, J. J., Beretvas, S. N.,
Svinicki, M. D., & Gorin, J. S. (2005).
Christenson & Hirsch, 1998).
TOREN, N. K. (2013). MULTIPLE DIMENSIONS OF
PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT AND ITS
LINKS TO YOUNG ADOLESCENT SELF-EVALUATION
AND ACADEMIC
ACHIEVEMENT. Psychology In The Schools, 50(6), 634.
doi:10.1002/pits.21698