Be in the Loop

This  week is going to be a short week, being that fall break took Monday and Tuesday from being in our classrooms.  However, that means this week is going to fly by faster than normal weeks and there is a lot to get accomplished within a shorter amount of time.  For my small group instruction, I am just continuing the magazine that we started last week and taking these extra days to catch up, or delve a little deeper into the activities that I originally planned for last week.  My students are still very interested in the articles we are reading and have been cooperating each week to complete the assignments I have for them.  As the semester moves past the halfway point, I have started to notice the different tasks my CE does to keep the parents/guardians in the loop.  She makes an effort every week to sit down and reflect on the week, as well as to include the different events and important dates that they may need to know for the upcoming week.  I really admire this about my CE and have heard praises from the parents thanking her for keeping them involved with what their child is experiencing in the classroom!

I found a really good post on Edutopia.org giving teachers resources and tips on how to create an eye catching and informational newsletter for parents/guardians. This article listed various websites and apps that allowed teachers to make their own webpage for free and even allow them to update it whenever needed.  This is awesome for someone like me, who is getting ready to have a classroom of my own because having knowledge to free resources is key!  I plan to send home a weekly newsletter with my students as well.  I am sure I will have some practice when I am student teaching and will be able to see an example of a format I could implement in my future class.  This article not only listed resources to create a newsletter to send home, but it also gave different ideas about how to send it out.  For an example, I thought having a QR code would work really well if it were to be printed on their take home folders. The parents or guardians could just scan the code each week and the newsletter would pop up for them to read over.  There were other ways a teacher could make this process work, but that is just one that stuck out to me.

I highly encourage you to take a look at this article because it lists multiple resources to use and give ideas on how to implement them!!!!  https://www.edutopia.org/blog/tech-tips-for-parent-newsletters-monica-burns

This blog post best represents NCTCS one because the teacher should take leadership not only for what happens in their own classroom, but also be responsible for taking leadership outside of their classroom.  One way to do this is to reach out to the parents/guardians and let them know exactly what is going on in your classroom and how it is going.  Newsletters is a great tool to practice this standard!!!