A discussion of parental involvement in integrating Shakespeare's Romeo and juliet into the junior high language arts curriculum to lower achieving grade nine students

摘要

Advocates of parental involvement recognize the tremendous potential that exists when the home and school cooperate but effective partnership is actually minimal, due mainly to the need for useful, organized information on parental involvement This project monitored the development of a Romeo and Juliet unit of work to two grade nine classes at the John Cabot Junior High (pseudonym). Individualized activities were introduced to seven low achievers and, through a home-school collaborative effort, an attempt was made to improve the active learning of these students. -- The results of this project indicated that both parents and students found the unit of work to be satisfactory and that the strategies introduced were adequate for meeting the project's expectations, and thus increasing the students' school success. Basically the problems that occurred related mainly to ineffective communication between the parties concerned, but once the parents realized that the focus of the involvement was their children's success, they were willing to work through any obstacle and view it as an inevitable inconvenience in any learning experience. It was noted that the students, though there was a significant improvement in their learning skills, did not generally view the home-school cooperation as a partnership but as a teacher-directed initiative that would ensure their homework was completed.