“Parental engagement has a large and positive impact on children’s learning”
(Goodall et al., 2011)
We know that parent communication is key for any school, however with busy lives and ever-changing schedules, getting hold of parents isn’t always possible and can become extremely time consuming.
With Frog, you can keep parents and carers up to date as often as you need to...
Beaumont Hill Academy, Darlington is a specialist provision for children with educational needs and they’ve been using Frog for over 5 years. Their platform is set up so that each student has their own Frog site which is only accessible by their parent/carer and class teacher. Staff can send messages via the Wall widget and receive replies as well as sending photos using FrogSnap. Both are quick and easy to set up and this allows parents to check the platform when they receive a notification or later if they are not able to straight away.
We spoke with Clare Steed, Art and E-Safety Lead who
created the sites:
“Given the needs of our students it’s so important to capture pictures and videos of those magic moments quickly and parents love to see the progress as and when it happens. These are things that cannot be captured in a home school communication book. It's also a great way for us to record progress against EHCP targets”
In addition to parental communication, their platform is set up as a place where staff can access lesson plans, upload letters to parents and view school notices. Because Frog is so versatile, we’ve been able to assist Clare in setting up their platform to give them just what they need.
If you want to know how to set up your own set of pupil sites, check out our guide to ePortfolios:
Goodall, J., Carpentieri, J., Brooks, G. and Akerman, R. (2011). ‘Review of best practice in parental engagement: Practitioners summary’. [online] Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/review-of-best-practice-in-parental-engagement