At the beginning of the school year, we get excited (or overwhelmed) with ideas for setting up the classroom and planning the first days of school. And we also have a lot of ideas and information to tell our students and their families, so when it comes to composing the welcome back letter to parents and students, we have to think about how we can blend the practical and ethical so as not to lose sight of what’s most important: learning.
Communication is so important to nurturing a community that values learning in and beyond the classroom, and with technology, there are a lot of ways to do that, which can be overwhelming, become time consuming, and ultimately distract readers from the important ideas you want to emphasize.
In this post, I walk you through my thinking and choices as I composed my welcome letter to my 7th and 8th grade reading families. There are actually eight steps with two openings because I am sure I left something out.
In spending some time working through these eight steps, you can put all the information (with links) you need in one short but meaningful welcome letter so as not to overwhelm or distract parents or students with those dreaded packets.
1. Make a video introducing yourself and your beliefs about learning and grading (and link it).
Take sometime to consider your beliefs about learning and the purpose of education. Think through your beliefs about grading and why. Write it out. Work through your procedures and rationale for what you grade, how, and why. Decide on your policy for redos or retakes, late work, absences, etc. Again, think through your reasonings and really consider if your reasons match your beliefs about learning and the purpose of education.
If you are you going to use standards in your teaching and assessment, define standards for yourself, your students, and their families. Standards are the expectations of what teachers are to teach. The standards are decided by the state. The curriculum, however, is how those standards are taught. Curriculum includes the many resources, activities, and lessons teachers select to teach the standards, and this is mostly decided by the school or district, but, essentially, the teacher is the one creating the curriculum (depending on the school). The curriculum is the means by which I bring students to know and be able to demonstrate the standards. I want to make clear the meaning of standards because I will talk about and reference them a lot this school year.
Create a slide show of your beliefs and procedures. If you haven’t already, add Screencastify to your Chrome browser, and make a video. Don’t make it too long. I tried to keep mine to 8 minutes but went slightly over. You an also use your video at open house. Here it is:
2.Set up an easy way to reach out to parents and students and for them to reach out to you.
I use Remind. It is texting-like app that you can also use on your desk-top. I use Remind to send a picture of a book I am reading, to attach a PDF of a letter or handout, to share an interesting article, or the simply “remind” students and parents about an event or assignment. You can text one-way or two-ways. Include a link with instructions in your letter.
3.Create a simple form for parents and/or students to tell you important information.
There is no short-cut for getting to know your students. You may have access to a student’s test scores, address, phone number, and grades history on your online grading system, but we all know that data tell just one kind of story. I know you will create wonderful assignments to get to know your students, to hear another kind of story. However, if there is some bit of information that would really make a difference right away, wouldn’t you like to know that sooner than later. How many times did you “hear” about an IEP way later than you should have? How many times did you read a story where the father dies (for example) only to later discover one of your students lost her dad over the summer? Did you ever think or say Geesh, I wish I knew. It’s so easy to make and share a Google form or Survey Monkey. Link to it in your letter and ask parents (and students) to fill it out. Below is a screenshot of a form I created.
4.Think of some ways parents and families can be included in your classroom and invite them.
I have made the switch away from whole-class novels toward student-choice, which means I need a great classroom library. A classroom library becomes great when it appeals to a lot of readers, and to do that, a lot of readers need to have a say in what books go on the shelves. I have been consulting readers across the country for suggestions and reading those suggestions every day (see my Instagram #bookaday project), but I need the input of my students and their families, too. So I assigned each family the “homework” of gifting a NEW book to the classroom and bought some inexpensive dedication stickers for those books. For book ideas, I added a link to my book wish list in the welcome letter. I also asked families to donate pencils, pens, papers, and sticky notes for the community supply closet.
5. Promote the sort of reading experiences you value.
Think ahead to when you will meet the families. Those are opportunities to promote reading. I want reading to be part of the home life of students, which does not mean reading as a requirement or some battle parents have with kids. For me, reading at home should look like cuddling up with a book and a favorite snack; readers carry a book with them everywhere; and I want books to be gifts to treasure and share.
I asked friends and families for gently used picture books to give to the siblings of my students when they come to visit the classroom on walk-the-schedule day or open house. I will put a sticker on the books and ask my students’ siblings to write their names in the books, and then I plan to ask parents to take pictures of their kids reading the books (with the book covering up just enough of their faces so I can share the pics) and post the pics on Remind or Instagram with our hashtag. I hope parents will do this, too (take selfies or shelfies reading books). (See the next step.)
6. Create a class hashtag to nurture community.
Come up with a class hashtag so that students and parents can post pictures of them reading books or new books all year long. We- us teachers- can share our class hashtags to create a beautiful community of readers celebrating the real life of readers (not the ones where there are reading logs and grades and such). I don’t have a hashtag yet, so it is not in my welcome letter. I plan to create one with my students.
7. Decide on “one” central location to post updates about your classroom and share information with parents and students.
Blogs, websites (WordPress, Weebly), Google classrooms, and Smore — there are lots of ways to share information about your classroom. Each mode has its benefits. I use Kidblog for student portfolios, and I started a website with Weebly (in part because it was pretty but mostly to share with parents). My students use my Kidblog site — nearly 200 of them — so important documents, slides, forms, videos, class calendars, and announcements reach my audience easily, and anything I create in my Google Drive can be linked to the blog post automatically updating anytime I make revisions to those documents. I can send email blasts to parents with links to the blog or send the link through Remind for parents who prefer a text to an email.
Whatever format you use, try to have just one central location so that you are not updating multiple sites or spending time updating a site without an audience. (I deleted my Weebly website.)
8. Write one, brief welcome letter (with important links).
Now put all this information together in a very brief blog post or document (in your central location) with embedded links to the video and important sites or “assignments” you have for parents.
Send this letter out via email if you have access to that information through your school grade system. Post it on your blog or website. If possible, send it out before you start school so that your letter will have parents’ attention before the influx of packets from other teachers.
Below is a screenshot of my letter, which you can read in its entirety here. I will translate this letter into Spanish for my bilingual families and have a colleague check it over, but most districts have someone who can help you translate short documents like this:
9 and 10. What else?
I am sure I forgot something, but I feel like that is okay because I don’t want to overwhelm my families, and I think I made it clear that I value communication and want to promote a real reading life for my students and their families. Still, I’d like to hear your ideas.
Now on to setting up the classroom.