After posting my Blog this morning on parental involvement and the article written by James P. Comer, I actually observed parental involvement in my placement school today!  As I was explaining earlier, it is very important for parents to become more involved in their child’s schooling.  Parents need to realize that children take away experiences from all types of adults, not only just their teachers.  Parental involvement can come in many forms, such as becoming involved in school governance (PTA), volunteering in the classroom, or even just chaperoning a field trip.  Today, I was observing a fifth grade mathematics class at my placement school.  I was surprised to see a parent of one of the students taking part in the class by working alongside of the teacher.  The class was doing a hands-on lesson involving jelly beans and probability.  The cooperating teacher began the lesson by giving a quick definition review of probability.  The class had clearly already learned about probability and this lesson was a follow-up on the topic.  Next, she handed out a worksheet and bags of jellybeans to each student.  The students worked individually with the worksheet and the jellybeans, figuring out the probability of drawing each color of jellybean out of a bag.  The teacher walked around the class and also discussed with the parent the lesson they were working on.  When the students had questions, the parent would try to answer the questions or request the help of the teacher if necessary.  With the parent being involved in the classroom, she was able to really understand what her child’s class was working on, as well as show her child that she wants to be involved in his/her learning.  I really liked observing this because it correlated perfectly with the article on parental involvement from the George Lucas Educational Foundation website.