Parent Odds and Ends--FREEBIE!!

Hi, friends!

It seems like lots of people are getting ready to go back to school; DC doesn't start until August 24th, but I know that if I was going back this year I'd be getting ready.  Instead, I'm trying to bring you helpful and relevant back to school content.  (Hopefully, it's working.)  This is the last post in my parent communication series.  It's a mix of odds and ends, and I'm hoping it will be helpful.  I tried to post this yesterday, but the littles had different ideas.

So this last post is just a mix of other quick ways I communicate with parents.  The first way I want to share with you is Remind (it used to be called Remind101, so you might know it that way as well).  This should link to their website with directions on how to sign-up.  I used Remind every year I was in the classroom, and I LOVED it!  It's so easy to use; you give your parents a code to sign up and then you can easily text reminders to every parent who signed up.  You can also create groups within your Remind, so maybe you need to text just your chaperones, or just your parent volunteers.  You can do that, too!  Remind definitely saved me time every year, and it takes about 1 minute to set up.  Definitely worth the time.

Last, but not least, I added a freebie to my TpT store today of forms that I use to send quick notes home.  There are 3 stock notes included--a NUT note, a volunteer reminnder, and a number change form.  You can grab this freebie here.  I always taught in a uniform school, so when students came out of uniform I would say home a NUT note.  NUT stands for No Uniform Today.  Parents would sign it and send it back and I would keep track of them.  If students accumulated a certain number of NUT notes there would generally be some other consequence, but nothing too serious.  My personal opinion is that most kindergarten and first grade students aren't doing their own laundry or dressing themselves so they shouldn't have super stiff consequences for uniforms.  I also included my "oops" form; I used this when I tried to reach parents and couldn't because their number changed.  I think it's pretty straightforward.  Lastly, I included my parent volunteer reminder.  I would just fill this out and send it home with parents the night before they were set to volunteer.  With all of these forms, I would copy a ton of them on brightly colored paper at the beginning of the school year (each on different colored paper so it was easy to tell them apart) and just have them available to my in file folders that I mounted on the wall or on my bulletin board.  When I needed one of them, I would just pull it out and fill it out.  Generally, I would staple it to their student's homework for the night so that they were likely to see it.

I hope these forms save you some time!  Happy back to school!
xoxo

Reeling in Parents, Part 1

Howdy, y'all

It feels so weird to not be planning for back to school this year.  I'm not going back to school this fall; I'm going to spend at least half the school year home with our tiny nuggets.  But just because I'm not going back myself doesn't mean I don't have lots of ideas and feelings for you.  Last night, I shared my gigantic parent contact form that I always send home the first day of school.  If you missed the post last night, you can find the forms here in my TpT store for a paltry $2.  Basically, I'm going to blog about how I used these forms to hit the ground running with parent communication and track said communication throughout the year.  Even though I'm focusing on how I use one specific product, I anticipate that this will be kind of a long post.  You might want to grab some coffee/Diet Coke/wine now and settle in.  Whatever floats your boat.

The first thing you should know about me is that I love to organize.  Specifically, I love to organize in binders.  Few things make me happier than putting projects into binders with post-it tabs.  I'm feeling happy just thinking about it.  So after I get these forms back throughout the first week of school, I put them into a parent contact binder that will stay close to my teacher table for the entire school year.  Generally, I print out some type of cover sheet to look something like this.

Don't you worry, my pretties.  There's a page like this in the pack of forms on TpT, so that you too can obsessively label your binders.  Okay, so once I label the outside of my binder, I get to work on the inside.  Something else you should know about me (and something I'll talk more about later) is that I number my students every year.  They use this number all the time; it's in their cubby, on their folders, pencils, erasers, and it's also how they line up.  They get a number on the first day of school and it stays the same until they leave my classroom.  So the next thing I do with this binder is put forms in by number.  As students return their form, I hole punch them and stick a post-it label with their number on it at the edge, so that when all the forms have been turned in my binder looks something like this--full of returned parent forms, and numbered tabs.

What you can also see in this picture is the pages I use to track communication I have with parents.  Unfortunately, that's not something I made so I don't have that available yet, but I can make something to share.  Before I had this handy tracker, I used to just put a few blank pages of printer paper behind each parent communication form to track our interactions.  I kept really close track of parent interaction for several reasons.  First, I like to make sure I have a balance of positive communication and constructive communication.  Tracking parent communication can also help me notice trends in behavior that I might not have noticed otherwise.  It's a little hard to see, but basically the way I tracked communication was by tracking the date, the way I talked to the parent (in person, via phone or text, sending a note home, etc.), and what we discussed.  If we were discussing a particular behavior, I tried to note our outcome so that I could follow up with them again.  It sounds a little aggressive, but it probably took me about 2 minutes to track, and I could do most of it while waiting for parents to answer the phone.

The last thing I keep in my parent communication binder is this schedule/calendar that I keep at the front.  It's just a quick overview of parents who are willing to come in and volunteer in our classroom.  I split it by AM and PM, and just put in parents who are willing to come in on each day and what they're willing to do.  Some parents say they'll do anything I need, so I don't mark tasks for them.  I only note if there are parents who have said they'll do specific things, like prep work stations or make copies.  I also make sure to put their phone number on the schedule so that I can quickly contact them without having to go back into the whole binder.  After I make it, I slide it into a page protector and keep it at the front of my binder for the year.  

Okay, friends.  Thanks for sticking with me to the end!  I'll be back 3 more times over the next week or so with more parent communication ideas.  

xoxo

Responsive Classroom, Anyone?

The end of summer is so close.  Yesterday, the hubs and I were at a concert and we took some drinks to tailgate and I was refusing to drink fall-y beers because I refuse to acknowledge the fact that fall and back to school are just around the corner.  I am tenaciously clinging to the summertime!

I know I briefly talked about home visits yesterday, but I wanted to discuss another structure that my school uses today--Responsive Classroom.  If you're not familiar with responsive classroom, you can read more about it here.  Responsive Classroom (henceforth abbreviated as RC, for obvious reasons) is really an umbrella term for a lot of different classroom structures, and I have to say that I'm pretty into RC.  One part of RC that I LOVE is Morning Meeting.  Morning Meeting is the first thing (or one of the first things) that you do in your classroom every single day in RC.  There are 4 basic parts to Morning Meeting:  greeting, sharing, a game or activity, and morning message.  I'm not going to lie--sometimes Morning Meeting can go on for a while, to the extent that I sometimes find myself watching the clock, but at the same time I really believe that it's an incredibly important time in our day.  The Northeast Foundation for Children, the group who established Responsive Classroom, has an entire book dedicated to Morning Meeting--how to do it, ideas for greetings, games, activities, etc.  I also own that book and really love it.  But what I really like about Morning Meeting is that it's useful in so many different ways--kids practice social conventions, like shaking hands, and making eye contact to speak; they learn how to take turns, and respectfully ask and answer questions; and through morning message you can build reading/literacy behaviors.  I could go on for quite some time about Morning Meeting, but I'm going to try and be brief.  I really want to highlight one part of Morning Meeting, which is the share.  I follow a whole mess of other teacher blogs, so it comes to my attention that a lot of early elementary teachers are interested in how other teachers structure and manage their share, so I wanted to share how I manage our sharing.

For the first week of school, every kid shares every day.  I will pose a question to the group and give them a sentence stem, and then we'll go around in a circle and every kid will answer the question, and so will I.  So that might sound something like this--me:  "Friends, today we're all going to have the chance to share.  We are all going to answer the same question.  Our question today is what is your favorite color?  Let's all take 5 quiet seconds to think of our favorite color" (silently count to 5, while ticking seconds off on fingers)  "Great, friends.  When it's your turn, please stand up and say "My favorite color is ______", and put in your favorite color.  Then you can sit down, and it will be your neighbor's turn".  We do lots of favorite during the first week, and then starting the second week I'll have a sharing calendar that divides the entire class as evenly as possible across the 5 days of each school week.  When it's your day to share during morning meeting, I'll call students' names, one at a time.  When I call their name they'll stand and say "Good morning, class" and then the class will greet them in return, "Good morning, _________".  Then, that student will share in basically this format:  "Today, I would like to share ________________.  Any questions or comments?"  Students are allowed to take 2 questions and comments--1 boy, and 1 girl.  Then, they sit down, and the next student shares.  I generally do not have my kids bring in items from home, and I also almost always make them share.  If they say they don't have anything to share I'll ask them a few questions to get them thinking, like what did you do after school yesterday, what did you eat for dinner last night, are you excited about something this weekend, etc.

Responsive Classroom has a ton of structures that I use daily (as well as some that I really need to get about--logical consequences, I'm looking at you)--morning meeting, quiet time, choice time, closing circle, academic choice.  They also have structures that you use on an as-needed basis to introduce new topics to students, like guided discovery and modeling.  If you're new to RC, or looking to learn more I would recommend their book The First Six Weeks of School.  You can buy it on Amazon, or on the RC website.

I use this book every year to plan my first few weeks of school.  (Ironically, not all 6, but it's still really helpful.)  Anyone else use Responsive Classroom?  Feelings?   

Skipping Town

Y'all.  The back to school pressure is REAL!  My to-do list grows every day, and I'm not really sure I'm making any forward progress.  It's literally keeping me up at night.

However, said pressure is not stopping me from leaving my lovely husband behind for the next few days in DC while I hightail it up to PA to meet my parents and aunt.  I mean, really it's only 3 days.  And I promise to work on the train.  And I'll go into my classroom on Friday.  So this will be fine, right?

I don't really have a specific plan in mind today, but I did want to share 3 things with you.
1.

  I don't know if your Target will have the same deals as mine, but I got these binders for 99 cents EACH!  True confession:  sometimes, when I find really great teacher deals I turn into a bit of a hoarder.  Do I have any idea what I'm doing with 5 brand new binders?  Heck no.  But I hate when I feel like I'm a binder down in the middle of the year and people want me to pay them $4 for it.  So I'm preemptively striking this year.

2.

Last Friday was a BEAUTIFUL day out here in DC.  I mean, practically perfect--sun shining, low humidity, just a few puffy clouds in the sky.  And all I wanted was to go to the pool.  But instead, I powered through and loosely planned my ENTIRE first week of school.  I definitely feel like I need to go back and script out a few lessons to make sure my timing is right, especially for the first few days.  But it does feel pretty liberating to know that I have the majority of my first week back planned.  One thing I definitely need are crafts to introduce some new materials--I would like to find something where my kids are painting, cutting, and gluing all in one craft, but I have no idea what the one craft will be.  To the pins!  I'm sure I'll be able to find something on Pinterest.  Right?!  

3.  And here's the last thing I wanted to share with you.  This very interesting infographic from my adorable baby brother who works for an educational publishing company.  (They mostly target higher ed companies, so no freebies for this girl, but it definitely gives him a super interesting perspective on the pace/trajectory of education.)  I'm not 100% sure I share this vision for the future of education, but it's definitely an interesting picture that they paint.  I have a lot of reservations, but like I said it's very interesting food for thought.  

I'm going to finish this laundry and get to packing for my last mini-vacation of the summer!  Enjoy the waning days of summer break!  How many days do you have left?