Inform vs. Overwhelm: How to Provide Information to Parents at the Beginning of the Year

Last night, I posted a photo on Instagram of some of the documents that I was prepping for Open House and Back to School. Several people requested a blog post about what I send home with parents at the beginning of the year and here it is!! These documents have been a work in progress for me over the past three years and many of my ideas come from other teachers.

When I start planning my handouts for back to school, I always start with the mindset "Inform. Don't Overwhelm." I want to give my families the information that is necessary for the beginning of the year, but I don't want to overwhelm them. I figure that people are more likely to read and remember what I write if it is brief and informative. I had a professor in college who collected everything that was sent home in her elementary-aged son's folder throughout an entire school year. She brought the box into our education class and threw the papers all over the room. We sifted through the papers and so much of it was JUNK! Her point was that if we want parents to be involved and supportive, we need to be very conscious of what we are sending home. DON'T overwhelm them or give them too many flyers, just give them the info that they need to start the year successfully.

Okay, so let's get to it. I send home information in three chunks... A letter to families that I send to each student's home in August, a packet of information at Open House (before school begins), and additional information at parent-teacher conferences in October. I've added links to some of my handouts throughout this blog post that you can grab for free. I also use handouts created by Cara Carroll at the First Grade Parade. Here's a link to her blog post about Back to School Night.

My Welcome Letter:

These three documents go into an envelope and I mail them to families about two weeks before school begins. I send a brief letter introducing myself, a permission slip for our class website, and a reminder sheet about Open House. I send the permission slip about the class website because parents can check it out before Open House, if they are interested. Many parents even return the permission slip to me at Open House. Here's a link to my class website permission slip.

Open House:

At Open House, I stick an extra desk in the hallway outside my door with a welcome sign, Open House checklist, some pencils, and our class puma. The checklist tells parents what to complete in the classroom before leaving.

On each student's desk, I have a little welcome bag for them with a few treats, a pencil, and an eraser.

For families, I have a 6in by 9in manilla envelope with each child's name on it. The envelope contains all of my Open House documents for parents. The label also tells parents which papers need to be returned to school. Here's a copy of my labels. I stick them on the envelopes with two-sided tape.

Here's what each envelope contains:

Things to Know for the Beginning of the Year: This is a front/back document with the essential back to school info including information about take home folders homework, puma packets (basically at home reading practice), nutrition break, student birthdays, and sharing.

Getting to Know your Child Form: A basic questionnaire that parents fill out about their child. (included in Cara Carroll's Meet the Teacher document- see blog post here) I also print this one back to back.

Lend a Helping Hand Parent Volunteer Form: I send a form home for parents to fill out if they are interested in volunteering in the classroom. It gives them specific options to pick from so I know how they are interested in helping. Here's a link to download the volunteer form for free. (This was also Cara Carroll's idea that I re-created several years ago... just want to give credit where credit is due! She just has the BEST stuff!)

A Class Schedule: Many parents request this, so I just send it right away.

Okay, so that pretty much wraps up the information that I provide parents with at Open House.

I'll leave you with a photo of my favorite part of Open House... taking each student's picture with our class puma. The kids LOVE him! He becomes a very special friend throughout the year.

Oh, I can't wait to do this all again!! Comment below if you have any great Open House or back to school communication tips!!

Literacy Take-Home Bags!

Getting Started:

One thing that I have been thinking about a lot this school year is how to get my students reading at home and applying the strategies that we are working on at school. Last year, I sent home our guided reading texts after we read them in reading groups. Rookie mistake... I had several books not come back to school and now my sets are missing a book.

What texts do I send home?

This year, I decided to utilize the website, Reading A-Z. My school has a subscription to the website and it has hundreds of printable books at every reading level. We use the F&P leveling system and Reading A-Z provides correlation charts to many leveling systems. Not sure how much the membership costs our district, but it is definitely worth inquiring into!!

In the fall, I began printing out books at different reading levels to send home with my students each week. When they would return the books, I would rotate the books through different students at that level. The great thing about paper books was that I wasn't worried about them getting lost. However, after a few families used a book, it often became mangled and ripped and I found myself reprinting the same book again and again.

Well, not any more! I decided to put more time and energy into creating a more permanent set of books, with the hopes of saving the books for several years before having to replace them! I started by printing about 7-8 books at each level. I printed the front and back covers on cardstock and had them laminated.

 

 

One of my co-workers has an old school binding machine in her classroom so I commandeered it for a few weeks, lugged it home, and began binding the books. I used my Fiskers scrapbook paper cutter to cut the pages straight and even. Talk about tedious, but so satisfying to have a great, colorful, durable set of take-home books.

The thing that I love about Reading A-Z is that there is a great selection of fiction and nonfiction texts. Take a peak at what the books look like below!




Over the past year and a half, I have been debating the philosophical dilemma of whether my students/parents should know their reading levels or not. Many teachers that I know feel very strongly against parents knowing their child's reading level because they feel that parents put too much focus into achieving a certain level vs. teaching the reading strategies and behaviors. The Reading A-Z texts have the reading levels at the bottom of the pages and on the back cover. I blacked out the levels on the pages and the correlation chat on the back cover. However, for my own sanity, I need to be able to see the levels of the books so that I make sure I am filing them correctly and sending appropriate books with each student. Below you will see how I blacked out the levels in the chart, but I left the level in the copyright information. I figure that if parents are REALLY looking, they could find the levels, but oh well... The jury is still out on this one!

I currently am sending the books home in a gallon-size Ziploc bag with that child's name on it. However, next year, I'd like to purchase some "reading themed" book bags, like these ones that I found at Lakeshore Learning! Cute!

Communication with Parents:

Okay, so I've said my piece about the actual texts that I am sending home with the students, but I also want the literacy bags to be used effectively at home. One of the things that we talk about ALL THE TIME at school is the importance of re-reading texts to BUILD FLUENCY! When I sent texts home last year, many students were bring the books back the next day. I wanted them to read the texts several times to build fluency and work on their "nice reading voice." This year, I sent home a "suggested use" document with the literacy bags, which helps parents to use the texts effectively with their child to build FLUENCY and COMPREHENSION STRATEGIES. The document also gives accuracy strategies for students to try if they stumble upon a "puzzling word." Here is a link to my LITERACY BAG GUIDE.

Within the bag, I also send a reading log for parents to record and comment on their child's reading. Great communication tool! Very simple, but here's a link to the RECORDING LOG as well.

Make It Fun & Other Practice Activities:

My next project is to add more comprehension/journaling activities to the take-home bags.

For students who struggle with fluency, I often send one of the following activities in their bags as well.

Fluency Triangles: fun/silly sentences to read back and forth with a family member. You can pick these up from my TPT store. They are correlated to the Pre-Primer and Primer Dolch word lists.

Fluency Phrases: Short phrases to practice reading fluently on flashcards. Click the link for the freebie! The cards are off-center because I printed them on cardstock and put them on a binder ring!

Hope that this post is useful to you! I've spent a lot of time this year thinking about how to create a solid connection between literacy at home and literacy at school.

Too funny!