Workshops aim to help parents with math, literacy strategies

Groton — Parents of schoolaged children are used to seeing early dismissals and days off for professional development to enhance teachers' practices. But Claude Chester Elementary is also amid eight free evening workshops that read as parent development.

From late September to the end of this month, the school is hosting one math workshop and one literacy workshop for kindergarten, grades 1 and 2, grade 3, and grades 4 and 5. This comes from Title 1 funding.

The literacy workshops at Claude Chester began three years ago with an initiative from Catherine Kolnaski Magnet School teacher Debbie West. The instructors this year are literacy specialist Nancy Berube and math specialist Carol Marsiglio.

The format this year is a change from the past, when the workshops targeted K-1 for literacy and 1-2 for math, in six-week courses. But Claude Chester Principal Jamie Giordano found it was hard for parents to commit to a six-week session, so now parents can just attend one workshop.

Each session includes childcare and light dinner.

The third of four literacy sessions closed out Tuesday night with the children returning for a read-aloud of the 1945 picture book “The Carrot Seed.”

Eliah Rivera, 6, accurately predicted that character after character would pooh-pooh the seed's ability to grow, but he boasted at the end that he believed all along.

“He likes reading and whatever I can do to help improve at school, I mean, that's the future right there,” his mother, Charlene Ledesma, said of her decision to attend. She was one of three parents in attendance on Tuesday evening.

Literacy specialist Nancy Berube led the workshop and delineated 10 needs of young readers, such as good teachers and models, long stretches of time to read, specific feedback, and building a knowledge base by reading nonfiction.

Tutor Christina Blais, a retired Northeast Academy Elementary teacher, responded to a specific parental concern by showing strategies to help kids differentiate B's and D's.

Bridgette Spargo said the session made her think more about how she reads with her son, and that her takeaway was the importance of parental engagement.

Giordano told The Day that the math sessions are similarly structured but have more of a focus on why approaches to teaching math have changed over the years. She cited the approach of teaching kids math horizontally before vertically, and an increased focus on real-life applications.