Learning About and Connecting with Families
There are several useful strategies you can use to begin gathering information to help you connect your curriculum with the children and their families. In this section we will consider three: (1) questionnaires and interviews, (2) family mapping, and (3) storytelling.
Asking parents to complete an informational questionnaire or to participate in an interview, either at school or during a home visit, can be extremely useful. The purpose of these activities should be twofold: to gather information about the child and to learn about the family. Including a brief introductory statement that describes the purpose of the interview or questionnaire can answer questions parents might have about its intent.
Family survey questions should be framed in a manner that gives parents control over how they report information. For example, asking to list family members who live in the home and indicate their relationship to the child is preferable to listing family roles such as “mother,” “father,” “sisters,” “brothers,” with an adjacent fill-in blank.
Table 5.4 lists several examples of questions about children and families you might want to ask.