Close the Gap Between School and Home
Updated: April 11, 2004
Free Web resources let you communicate with ease!
By Brenda A. Dyck
Do these statements sound familiar?
| • | "I didn't know my report was due Tuesday!" |
| • | "I left my assignment sheet at school, so I couldn't work on it." |
| • | "I never know when Kevin has a test. If I did, I'd be able help him study." |
| • | "I didn't get the school newsletter. Too bad I missed the concert Wednesday night!" |
Keeping students and parents up to date on classroom and school expectations has never been more challenging. With the rising demand for teacher accountability, I knew I had to find a new way of plugging the gaps in my home/school communication. Once again the World Wide Web came to my rescue!
Web Tools Galore
I discovered a number of free and easy online sites designed to help me reach parents and students with ongoing communication about the happenings in my classroom and our school. There are many to choose from, but my personal favorites include The Copernicus Education Gateway (more about this one below), Blackboard (which also lets you teach online courses!).
Schoolnotes.com ultimately became my site of choice. At first, all I did was post my daily homework, but eventually this tool wove itself into the very fiber of life in my classroom. If you checked my Schoolnotes page out today, you would discover:
| • | Reminders of upcoming school functions |
| • | Real-time observations of meaningful learning events in my classroom |
| • | Links to Quia online quizzes created by me and other teachers, designed to help students prepare for upcoming tests. For an example of these, see Taking Unit Two Until You Know What To Do!! |
| • | Flashcards to help students prepare for spelling tests |
| • | An e-mail component so students and parents can easily contact me |
| • | A feature called "Notify Me," through which parents can register to receive an e-mail reminder each time I update my page. |
Do It Daily
I now understand that the more I connect student learning to my Web page, the more inclined students and parents are to use it. By posting daily homework and linking current assignment URLs on my page, I give my students plenty of opportunity to get more comfortable accessing my page; checking it will become a routine occurrence for parents. Use of this tool has not only improved my home/school communication, it has helped me organize my classroom by forcing me to think through my upcoming week, and articulate the purpose of my assignments so that parents catch the vision of what I am doing.
No More Excuses
One of the best outcomes of using Schoolnotes has been the coverage it provides for me when a parent claims that they never know what is going on, or when a student is "absolutely certain" that I didn't say an assignment was due on a particular date!
Check out any one of these various online communication tools. Register for a password and try one out. Each one has its own style and advantages but the end result for all of them is the same: an enhanced culture of communication and learning.
