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Positive and Productive Environments

Strong partnerships between school and home deliver the best outcomes for children, and are a key enabler in providing consistent support across the home and school settings.

Creating Consistent Support across Home and School Settings

These resources provide guidance, tips and advice to parents, carers and families of children with diverse learning needs, to share with you tips and ideas commonly used in schools to establish positive, structured and productive environments.

You are already doing the most important things to support your child's learning – by providing comfort, support and encouragement to your child.

Sharing strategies between schools and families simply provides consistent support to children, which can accelerate their learning achievements.

Consider the environments that already exist within your home, and see how using structure in the home can help encourage your child to practise routines and skills. Using consistent structures and systems across both home and school helps children to access a wider variety of tasks and activities, and to generalise new skills learned across multiple settings.

Click here to view the Using structure to access remote learning videos

Next, consider what practical tips might be useful in helping your child to increase their independence in the home.

1. Increasing Independence at Home, for Optimal Learning at School: A Toolkit for Families

The Increasing Independence at Home: A Toolkit for Families has been designed to support parents, carers and families to engage children of all ages and abilities in meaningful activities at home, relating to learning goals. This could be to encourage homework completion, or to provide opportunities for your child to practise new skills and routines in the home that have been taught at school.

Remember, no one expects you to be a teacher or expert in the subject.

The tips and ideas presented are designed to support families to increase their child's motivation and engagement with their learning. When children are meaningfully engaged, it will have a positive effect on behaviour.

The toolkit features six key tips to support you at home. These will benefit all children, including those with disability and additional needs.

Practical tips found in the toolkit include:

Motivating Children Motivating Children.docx

Encouraging Engagement Encouraging Engagement.docx

Prompting Prompting.docx

Breaking Down Tasks and Activities Breaking Down Tasks and Activities.docx

Using Visual Supports UsingVisualSupports.docx

Visual Schedules. Visual Schedules.docx

Most tips feature a link to a short video of that tip in action, along with handy templates that you can download or make at home.

Refer to this toolkit when talking to your child's teacher. As some children can show different behaviour/s across different settings (i.e. school and home), some tips will be more relevant in one setting than the other.
To prevent becoming overwhelmed, prioritise which tips to learn and use. Consider what resources you might need to find or create.
Check with your child's teacher if they can supply the required resources or support the creation of resources.
Reflect on your child's progress as you learn and implement the tips. Schools will be able to support you in the use of these tips as you share feedback, and monitor progress.

2. Positive Partnerships: Additional Engagement Supports

If you would like further support in engaging your child in tasks and activities in the home, some additional ideas are represented in this section.

Additional Engagement Supports include a video and downloadable tips to encourage children who might require a little more help.

Please seek advice from your child's teacher and school if you require further support in engaging your child in tasks and activities in the home, relating to their learning goals.

Additional Engagement Supports