Mississippi Public Broadcasting (MPB), in partnership with Springboard to Opportunities, is hosting a 7-week parent academy on January 20-March 1, 2015, for parents of children ages 2-8. The target audience consists of fifteen families from two neighboring apartment complexes in Jackson (Lincoln Garden and Commonwealth Village).
The Springboard to Opportunities Parent Academy is part of MPB’s Ready To Learn initiative that promotes using PBS KIDS® technology resources to impact children’s educational development. The math and literacy-based educational content offers a variety of informative educational sessions featuring instruction and hands-on activities for parents and children. On Tuesday evenings of each week, parents and children engage in small and large group discussion and activities that focus on technology, literacy and math skills using the PBS KIDS® LAB (pbskids.org/lab). Specific activities and games related to PBS KIDS® children’s series, story time, vocabulary and math are explored with the use of a touchscreen Google Chromebook. In addition to the website, the children engage in a read aloud and hands-on, age-appropriate activities after viewing the featured episode and games.
Using a family literacy model, parents and children are separated for a 40 minute instructional session and are then brought back together to practice what they learned. The parents are encouraged to spend quality time with their children using the information shared with them during their parental engagement session. They are also given useful tips and resource materials to take home. Each night the attending children take home a book provided by MPB to read at home and then share and retell the story at the next meeting night. The children and their parents are also encouraged to visit the pbskids.org/lab website and select age-appropriate activities to do alone and as a family.
What: Parent Academy
When: 5:30pm-7:30pm, Tuesday evenings until March 1, 2015
Where: Commonwealth Village
Dates | Session | Description |
January 20 | 1 | Overview |
January 27 | 2 | (Literacy) Kindergarten Readiness; Intro to Ready To Learn |
February 3 | 3 | (Literacy) Literacy-based Promotion Act; Ready To Learn |
February 10 | 4 | (Literacy) Common Core-English/Language Arts; Ready To Learn |
February 17 | 5 | (Math) Common Core-Math; Ready To Learn |
February 24 | 6 | (Math) Attendance; Ready To Learn |
March 1 | 7 | (Math) On the Path to Graduate, Dropout Prevention; Ready To Learn |
