Parental Engagement: How You Can Help Your Child During Distance Learning

As a parent, you will play an important role in your child’s success. During the distance-learning period, you can provide structure, support and guidance at home, which will have a significant positive impact on the performance of your child. Therefore, we encourage you take an active interest in their online learning and provide the right learning environment at home.

A Safe Learning Environment

You can ensure a safe home and online learning environment. We encourage you to place your child’s learning device in a common area of your home where you can monitor their online activity and time spent online, but also in a place with minimal distractions. For older children, this strategy will allow you to monitor them in an indirect manner. Ensure that the learning space is always clean and disinfected. Place a hand sanitizer and disinfectant nearby and make sure your child is washing their hands frequently. For younger children who find it difficult to understand online safety or technical issues, we advise you to check in with them from time to time and see if they are having any issues.

Learning Management and Support

Staying involved and showing interest in your child’s learning will have a positive impact on their success and self-confidence. We advise you to frequently check your child’s learning objectives and daily schedule. We also advise that you check in on their online e-learning platform daily to review course materials, announcements and assignment feedback. Parents can support their children by going over the assignment with their children before they start their work and ideally parents should also look over the work and provide positive reinforcement to their children for the effort they put into their learning. Once parents receive feedback from teachers, they should also share the feedback with students as it is important for students to get feedback and know that parents are being kept up to date by their schools.

Encourage and Celebrate!

Encouragement and celebration of your child’s achievements can be a great motivator and make them feel that their efforts are being noticed. If your child gets bored easily with routine learning activities, you can introduce new learning experiences through creating learning competitions with their peers or siblings, or by learning a topic through a family activity or experiments at home. Breaking up their learning schedule by including outdoor/indoor physical activities and games can also be effective.