Parent Teacher Communication & FREEBIE

I am busy getting ready for the back to school madness, that is quickly creeping up on me. When do you start back? My district's first day with kids is Wednesday, August 3 (a.k.a. too soon)! I am also dealing with a to-do list that continues to grow, and never seems to shorten. This crazy time of the year is one of my favorites though. Who doesn't love the smell of fresh crayons, and updating classroom decorations? It makes me all giddy inside thinking about it!

A very important part of the beginning of school is establishing relationships with not only the kids in your class, but the people who see those kids as they whole world, their parents.

I am going to share how I organize my parent communication, ways I use to communicate with parents, and one new way I am going to give a try this year!

ORGANIZATION

I use a binder like most people to keep track of when I called which parent. It isn't anything fancy, but it keeps my ducks in a row.

I keep this binder right next to my desk, which is by my computer and phone. Every phone call, gets written in the binder, and every email thread, is printed and put in the binder. 

I have it organized with tabs that I have written numbers on. Those numbers correspond with the numbers I give each student to make my life so much easier. I also do numbers because I don't have to update it every year by relabeling, I just have to update the papers.

The form I use is pretty simple. I start the year off with each tab having 2-3 pages behind it, so it is ready to go.

The diagram(ish) below just shows you what I use each part for and its significance.

If you want my binder cover and this form, get it for FREE in my TeachersPayTeacher store, or click 

the picture below.

WAYS I COMMUNICATE

I do the normal ways of communication, phone calls and emails, but below are two different ways I reach out/planning to reach out to parents.

BRIGHT NOTES: I started something new last year that I love doing. I call them "Bright Notes". They are simple, and honestly my favorite type of parent communication because I get to brag on their child. The "Bright Notes" are literally notes that have been written on AstroBright paper. The notes are specifically for positive things I saw during the day/week. I love them because I can send home a note saying how proud I am of a student about something super small or big he/she did in the classroom. This allows me to keep the parents informed on the small things their kids do throughout the day. I encourage the parents to keep them those notes on the refrigerator to keep the student motivated! :)

These notes can only be found in the student's mailboxes. During pack-up time when students go to their mailboxes they get so excited to see a "Bright Note" and secretly hide it with their other papers to keep it a secret. The looks on their faces melt my heart, especially when its a child that has worked really hard on something.

What I love about these notes is how easy they are. I have them printed and ready to go whenever I want to write one. Of course, I have them printed on many different beautiful AstroBright colors!

CLASSROOM WEBSITE/BLOG: After being inspired by multiple bloggers, I have decided to have a classroom website this year. I cannot wait to have another outlet where parents can get information, so those papers that "got lost" on their way home aren't an excuse to not know what is happening at school.

I plan on using it for important dates, a copy of my newsletter, and weekly posts about what we did. I want to try where each child is assigned a week, and they will write the weekly post for the class telling the parents what we did that week. I cannot wait to roll this out in August!

I read up on how The Brown Bag Teacher (she has a wonderful blog post explaining how she uses it) uses Weebly, and I decided to give that a try. It is really easy to use. I will come back and review how I like it later in the school year! :)

I hope you found something useful in this post you can take back to your classroom!