It's Tuesday, so I'm linking up with my BBB Holly from Fourth Grade Flipper for Tried It Tuesday.
This year, I've decided to try blogging for my parents. Over the past couple of years of teaching fourth graders, I've had the tendency to put too much responsibility on my students. I do think they need to be responsible, but I think there have been times that I haven't been as good about my expectations to parents as I am about communicating them to students.
This year, I am determined to be better about communicating with parents. I used Remind 101, now just Remind some last year and really liked it. I am planning on continuing to use it this year, but lots more. One big difference in communication for me is that I set up a blog for my classroom, parents, and students. My goal is take lots of pictures and post each day before I leave school. I want to make sure that my parents know what we are doing in class and I will post links to the resources we used in class and pictures of our math journals so if a student is absent they will be able see what they missed easily. I found Honey Bunch Blog Design this weekend to add a little pizazz to my new blog.
I got a premade template for money purposes and they were able to install it the same night! Talk about great customer service! I love how it looks and it matches my classroom!
How do you communicate with parents? Have you ever tried a blog before. I'd love to hear any tips and/or tricks!
Oh my you're up up and at 'em early this morning! I'm impressed. I have tried a blog, but I didn't really work for me. (I may try again in the future. :)) I do use remind, I send out positive postcards, I TRY to send out a newsletter once a month, and when I had a faculty webpage on the school webpage (which I was without for a year when I switched schools, but that I officially get back on Thursday) I tried to update it weekly. I put lesson plans/objectives, upcoming projects and events, and other things happening in our classroom. I've got to really be great (not just good) about parent and community contact this year while I'm working on National Boards. I'll be checking back in to see what others have added.
ReplyDeleteI am moving to grade 4 from kindergarten this year and I know communication will be very different. So used to almost daily contact with most of my parents face to face! Thanks for mentioning Remind as I am going to look into it.
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