In short
- A short, regular message that names the story, its theme and one question for home gives parents something real to talk about.
- In Hill and Tyson (2009), talk about the value of education and about learning had the strongest link with achievement, and help with homework was the exception.
- Kraft and Rogers (2015) found that weekly one-sentence messages from teachers to parents cut course failure in one high school program.
- There is no score for kindness, so report the story and the moral the pupil named, and never rank children's character.
Marks, attendance and homework are easy to report to parents. What a story taught is harder. Yet a parent who knows the class read a story about honesty can ask about it that evening, in any language. This article sets out what to send, how often and in what form. It reports what research found on parent involvement and on short messages from teachers, and where that research stops. It also covers parents who do not read English, families who see a value differently, privacy, and what to leave out.
How do you share values learning with parents?
Send a short message at a regular time, once a week or once per story. Name the story the class read. Say in one sentence what it was about. Give one question the parent can ask at home. That is enough to start a conversation, and the conversation is the point.
Do not try to report how kind or honest a child is. Report what happened in class.
A message has three parts:
- The story. Its title and one sentence about the plot.
- The value. The theme the class discussed, such as honesty or perseverance.
- The question. One open question for home, which the parent can ask in any language.
What did research find on parent involvement?
Parent involvement and achievement go together. Jeynes (2005) combined 41 studies of urban elementary school children in a meta-analysis. He found a significant relationship between parental involvement and academic achievement, of about 0.7 to 0.75 of a standard deviation.
A relationship is not proof of cause. Kraft and Rogers (2015) make the point themselves. Parental involvement is correlated with student performance, they write, and the causal relationship is less well established.
The Education Endowment Foundation (2018) reviewed the evidence in a guidance report for schools. It says there is an established link between the home learning environment and performance at school, at all ages. It also says the evidence on what schools can do to engage parents is mixed.
Which kinds of involvement helped most?
Not every kind of involvement is equal. Hill and Tyson (2009) combined 50 studies of pupils in middle school. Parental involvement was positively associated with achievement, with one exception: parents helping with homework.
The strongest association was with what the authors call academic socialization. That means parents communicating their expectations and the value of education, linking schoolwork to current events, fostering aspirations and discussing learning strategies. It is talk about learning. It does not require the parent to teach.
Sénéchal and Young (2008) looked at younger children. They reviewed 16 intervention studies, with 1,340 families, on reading from kindergarten to grade 3. Parent involvement had a positive effect on children's reading. Interventions in which parents tutored their children with specific literacy activities produced larger effects than those in which parents listened to their children read. In three studies, parents read to their children, and this did not produce significant reading gains.
Two cautions apply. These studies measured reading and school achievement, not honesty or kindness. And the summaries we read do not report results for pupils learning English as a foreign language.
What the studies support is modest. In Hill and Tyson (2009), talk about learning and why it matters was the kind of involvement most strongly linked with achievement. A message about a story makes that talk easier to start. Three working rules follow. They are our reading of the findings, not tested advice:
- Give parents something to talk about, not something to teach.
- Do not ask parents to correct English or mark work.
- Make the request specific. One named question is easier to act on than 'please discuss the story'.
Do short, regular messages to parents work?
One field experiment tested this directly. Kraft and Rogers (2015) studied high school students in a credit recovery program. Teachers sent each student's parents a one-sentence, individualised message every week. The share of students who failed to earn course credit fell from 15.8% to 9.3%. The authors report that this came mainly from preventing drop-outs.
The content of the message mattered. Messages about what the student could improve had larger effects than messages about what the student was doing well.
Note the limits. This was one program, with older students, and the outcome was course credit. It did not test messages about stories or values. It does show that one sentence a week can reach home and make a difference.
The Education Endowment Foundation (2018) takes a similar view across more studies. It says well-designed school communications can improve attainment and attendance. The effects may appear small, but the approach is low in cost and simple to introduce. Messages are likely to work better if they are personalised, linked to learning and framed positively. On tone, then, the two sources differ: the experiment favoured messages about what to improve.
The same report warns that there is such a thing as too many texts. It suggests a school counts the messages it already sends before adding more. It also warns against sending curriculum content that parents do not know how to respond to. It says a prompt for a conversation about what the child is learning could be beneficial.
Why values are hard to report, and what to report instead
A vocabulary quiz gives a score. Kindness does not. Any number you put on a child's character would be a guess, and parents would be right to question it.
There is a second problem. Pupils do not always take from a story the lesson the adult intended. Narvaez (2002) reviewed the research and concluded that children do not extract moral story themes as the writer intended. Readers understand the same text differently, because they differ in reading skill and background knowledge.
So report what you can observe: the story, the value the class discussed, and what the pupil said the moral was, in their own words. That sentence tells a parent more than a grade would.
For ways to get pupils to state the moral, see discussion questions to draw the moral from a story. For the wider argument, see the guide to teaching values through stories.
| What to share | How often | In what form |
|---|---|---|
| The story the class read, what it was about and the value it raised | Every story, or once a week | One or two sentences in a class message |
| One question to ask at home | Every story | One open question, translated where needed |
| The moral the pupil named, in their own words | Two or three times a term | A short individual note that quotes the pupil |
| The stories and values covered in the term | Once a term | A plain list in the term report |
Message templates you can adapt
The messages below are examples written for this article. The story and the pupil are invented, and the wording has not been tested in a study. Change the story, the value and the question to fit your class.
Example messages (illustrations, not tested scripts)
Weekly class message: 'This week we read The Broken Window. A girl breaks a neighbour's window by accident and has to decide whether to tell him. The story is about honesty. Ask your child: what did the girl do, and what would you have done?'
Individual note: 'After The Broken Window, I asked the class what the story teaches. Omar wrote: It is better to tell the truth quickly. You could ask him what happened next in the story.'
Added line for parents who do not read English, sent in the home language: 'You can talk about the story in your own language. Your child can tell you what happened.'
A message to avoid: 'Omar is one of the most honest children in the class.'
Keep each message short enough to read on a phone. One question is enough.
What about parents who do not read English?
In many EFL schools, some parents do not read English, and some do not read easily in any language. The Education Endowment Foundation (2018) asks schools to check what they do for parents who do not speak English or read well. It lists language differences among the reasons parents can be cut off from services.
A message about a story has an advantage here. The conversation it starts does not need English. The child read the story in English and can retell it at home in the family's language. We found no study that tests this form of retelling, so treat it as a sensible practice, not a proven one.
- Write the message in the language parents read. Keep the story title in English so that the child recognises it.
- Tell parents plainly that they do not need English to ask the question.
- Ask parents which channel and language they prefer. The Education Endowment Foundation (2018) advises that communication should be two-way.
For reporting levels and vocabulary to the same parents, see reporting reading progress to parents.
What if a family sees a value differently?
Families do not all weigh values in the same way. Most share a common core: honesty, kindness, courage, perseverance, fairness and responsibility. Start there.
The form of the message helps. A question leaves room for the family's own view. 'What would you have done?' invites a conversation. 'We taught your child that ...' invites an argument.
- Describe the story and ask the question. Do not tell parents what their child should believe.
- Share the term's list of stories and values in advance, so that nothing comes as a surprise.
- If a parent objects to a story, listen first. They may have seen something in it that you missed.
This section is practical advice, not a research finding. None of the studies cited here tested how a school should handle disagreement about values.
What not to report, and how to protect privacy
Some things should stay out of messages to parents.
- No ranking of character. Do not grade, score or compare children on honesty, kindness or any other value.
- No labels. 'Struggles with honesty' is a judgement about a person. Describe what the class read and what the pupil said.
- No other children. A message to one family should not name or quote another family's child.
- No disclosures. Pupils sometimes mention things about home during a discussion. Those do not belong in a message. If one worries you, follow your school's safeguarding procedure.
- No individual notes in group chats. Send them through the channel your school has approved.
Treat a pupil's words as their own data. Quote them to that pupil's parents and to nobody else. If you send messages through a platform, check who can see them. See student data privacy questions to ask a vendor.
How iRead handles this
In iRead, stories carry a moral, such as honesty, kindness, courage or perseverance. Dedicated quiz questions ask what the story taught. Values learned appear next to vocabulary gained in progress views, including the parent's view. A school's public page shows aggregate numbers only, never individual students.
The core principle: Report the story, the pupil's own words and one question for home. Never report a score or a rank for character.
See it in iRead: Stories carry a moral, and dedicated quiz questions ask what the story taught. Values learned appear next to vocabulary gained in progress views, including the parent's view.
See values through storiesKey takeaway
Send one short message per story: the title, the theme and one question. Let the conversation at home do the rest.
Frequently asked questions
How do you communicate with parents about character education?
Send a short, regular message that names the story the class read, the value it raised and one question to ask at home. Two or three times a term, add the moral the pupil named in their own words. Do not grade or rank character.
How can teachers involve parents in reading?
Give parents a small, specific task. Sénéchal and Young (2008) found that parent involvement had a positive effect on young children's reading. Specific literacy activities produced larger effects than listening to the child read. One named question about this week's story is a manageable start.
How often should teachers message parents?
Weekly is a reasonable rhythm. Kraft and Rogers (2015) tested weekly one-sentence messages. The Education Endowment Foundation (2018) reports that weekly messages over six to eight months appear to be effective. It also warns about too many texts, so count what your school already sends.
Should parents help with English homework?
Be cautious. In Hill and Tyson (2009), help with homework was the one kind of involvement not positively associated with achievement in middle school. The Education Endowment Foundation (2018) advises caution about direct help with homework, particularly for older children. Talking about the story is a safer request.
Can you assess values such as honesty or kindness?
Not with a score that means anything. You can record which stories a pupil read, which values the class discussed and what the pupil said the moral was. Narvaez (2002) concluded that children do not extract moral themes as the writer intended, so the pupil's own words are worth keeping.
Sources
- Hill, N. E., & Tyson, D. F. (2009). Parental involvement in middle school: A meta-analytic assessment of the strategies that promote achievement. Developmental Psychology, 45(3), 740-763. doi.org/10.1037/a0015362
- Jeynes, W. H. (2005). A meta-analysis of the relation of parental involvement to urban elementary school student academic achievement. Urban Education, 40(3), 237-269. doi.org/10.1177/0042085905274540
- Kraft, M. A., & Rogers, T. (2015). The underutilized potential of teacher-to-parent communication: Evidence from a field experiment. Economics of Education Review, 47, 49-63. doi.org/10.1016/j.econedurev.2015.04.001
- Sénéchal, M., & Young, L. (2008). The effect of family literacy interventions on children's acquisition of reading from kindergarten to grade 3: A meta-analytic review. Review of Educational Research, 78(4), 880-907. doi.org/10.3102/0034654308320319
- van Poortvliet, M., Axford, N., & Lloyd, J. (2018). Working with parents to support children's learning: Guidance report. Education Endowment Foundation. eric.ed.gov/?id=ED612191
- Narvaez, D. (2002). Does reading moral stories build character?. Educational Psychology Review, 14(2), 155-171. doi.org/10.1023/A:1014674621501