Five Resources to Kickoff Family Partnerships

Starting out on the right foot with hard-to-reach parents will pay dividends for the entire school year.

To overcome the challenge of creating new family partnerships, we've provided some virtual activities that allow for easy connections between staff and families to open the door to deeper and more trusting relationships.

Before enacting these activities, first, decide on a goal you want to achieve with family partnerships this year. This goal will serve as your “north star” to help prioritize your engagement efforts.

Activity 1: Survey families about their relationship with school

• Create a survey asking families about the rhythms and norms at home. Panorama has an excellent guide and questionnaire.
• Send the link to parents
• Read their responses and reply to the families who completed the survey

Do it the ReachWell way:

• Develop meaningful questions for your families
• Create a form that translates for families
• Send the form via app, email, and on your website all with one click
• Review your results in a secure spreadsheet or via email notifications

Activity 2: Dinner with their child

• Ask families to make dinner with their child
• Give families tips to make the experience meaningful
• Ask each family to provide a picture of what they made and what they learned

Tips for an impactful time making dinner:

• Math: Talk about estimating and fractions while measuring
• English: Engage with your child about the language of the recipe or ingredients
• Reading: Ask your child to read the ingredients or encourage your child to find more information about one of the ingredients used 
• Science: Talk about how the food changed from the beginning of making dinner to the end

Do it the ReachWell way:

• Send a broadcast message to your group announcing the activity
• Encourage families to reply to your message with their questions
• With permission, share the images with the whole class and send another broadcast message with a gallery of families’ dinners 

Activity 3: Show and tell

• Show and tell works for all ages
• Ask students to work with their parents/guardians to find a picture or item at home that shares about their family or heritage

Do it the ReachWell way:

• Two weeks before your show and tell presentations update it on your linked family calendar
• One week before the event send a broadcast message to your group(s)
• Send a chat to the families who are most challenging to reach, and tell them something new you learned about their student

Activity 4: Promote conversations with families

• Provide a list of questions for families to have intentional conversations
• Ask families to share about their experience 

Do it the ReachWell way:

• Update your resources page in the app with a list of intentional conversations
• Send a broadcast message highlighting the resource and the link to intentional conversations
• Ask students about their experiences
• Use the conversations with your students to start conversations with inactive parents

Activity 5: Book of importance

• Request students work with their family to pick out a book about their culture or their values
• Have students bring the book to school and share how it represents their culture or values

Do it the ReachWell way:

• Put the event in your linked family facing calendar
• Share a resource of places to find free books online
• Send a broadcast message reminding families about the event
• Reach out to families after the event, and share something new you learned about their values or culture
• Take advantage of this valuable moment to set you, your students, and your families up for a successful year!