Parent-Teacher Communication

*e-mails

Keep your e-mail communication short and clear. You should also offer a face-to-face or telephone communication as well. Often school districts provide guidelines and expectations for you to follow. If you district doesn't have any to offer you can check out

- Windham School District

-12 Tips for Better Email Etiquette

* Positive Notes Home

Remember to communicate with parents for positive achievements too!

* Phone Calls Home

When making phone calls home, document who you spoke with and was the call was about. This information may become useful down the line.

Lunch Box Love Notes:

What a great way to have parents and teachers show how much they care. Slip one of these into children's lunch boxes. There are so many other possibilities to use these in the classroom.

* Parent Teacher Conferences

Parent teacher conferences are usually required once or twice a year by the school district. This of course does not mean you can't meet with parents other than those dates. When meeting with parents, document the date and time that you met, who was present and major issues that were discussed. It is also helpful to have work samples.

* newsletters

Newsletters are a great way to communicate classroom information to all parents. It is also a great way to keep them informed on the happenings in your classroom

Check out: The Teacher Life: Tips and Printables

* Classroom Volunteers

These sample letters can be edited!

You can also create newsletters using Microsoft Publisher. Here is a tutorial on how to use the software. The flyer or brochure features would both do the job! Good luck.

- 10 Tips for Classroom Volunteers written by PTO Today

- Classroom Volunteers: Bonus or Bother? By Scholastic

* Classroom Blogs

Check out Mrs. Yollis' Classroom Blog which was voted #1 on the EDUblog Awards

If you are still not sure what to do, here is a resource from EduBlogger. They put together a list of great class blogs.

(The following excerpt was written byMollie Crie Published by Glencoe/McGraw-Hill, a division of the Educational and Professional Publishing Group of The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.,1221 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10020.

Copyright © 2000-2005 Glencoe/McGraw-Hill. All rights reserved.)

Educational Benefits of Blogs

In addition to providing teachers with an excellent tool for communicating with students, there are numerous educational benefits of blogs. Blogs are:

• Highly motivating to students, especially those who otherwise might not become participants in classrooms.
• Excellent opportunities for students to read and write.
• Effective forums for collaboration and discussion.
• Powerful tools to enable scaffolded learning or mentoring to occur.

Using the Blog in the Classroom

As an educational tool, blogs may be integrated in a multi-faceted manner to accommodate all learners. Blogs can serve at least four basic functions.

1. Classroom Management
   1. Class blogs can serve as a portal to foster a community of learners. As they are easy to create and update efficiently, they can be used to inform students of class requirements, post handouts, notices, and homework assignments, or act as a question and answer board.
2. Collaboration
   1. Blogs provide a space where teachers and students can work to further develop writing or other skills with the advantage of an instant audience. Teachers can offer instructional tips, and students can practice and benefit from peer review. They also make online mentoring possible. For example, a class of older students can help a class of younger students develop more confidence in their writing skills. Students can also participate in cooperative learning activities that require them to relay research findings, ideas, or suggestions.
3. Discussions
   1. A class blog opens the opportunity for students to discuss topics outside of the classroom. With a blog, every person has an equal opportunity to share their thoughts and opinions. Students have time to be reactive to one another and reflective. Teachers can also bring together a group of knowledgeable individuals for a given unit of study for students to network and conference with on a blog.
4. Student Portfolios
   1. Blogs present, organize, and protect student work as digital portfolios. As older entries are archived, developing skills and progress may be analyzed more conveniently. Additionally, as students realize their efforts will be published, they are typically more motivated to produce better writing. Teachers and peers may conference with a student individually on a developing work, and expert or peer mentoring advice can be easily kept for future reference.

* Mass Messaging

This is a great way to remind students and parents about spirit days, field trips, due dates and more...

Twitter- a tech tool/social network that lets you send and receive short messages, no longer than 140 characters

50 Ways to Use Twitter in the Classroom

Edmodo- teachers and students can use to send notes, links, files, alerts, assignments, and events to each other

Celly- cell phones have the potential to bridge the gap between the home, school, and social media world.