Blog Archives

Communication with home is essential, no matter what grade level you teach. With Back to School on the horizon, I’m sharing some simple ways you can connect with your students’ parents. Here’s the link to the first post if you missed it: Communicating with Parents.

Keep a class blog/website.

I just started my class blog last year, but I had numerous parents who checked it regularly and really depended on it to know what was going on at school. Mine is a WordPress blog. It’s free and it was simple to set up. Here’s what my class blog looks like:

I’m in the middle of cleaning it for the new year – but feel free to have a peek. It’s a work in progress at the moment, though.

For me, there are lots of benefits to keeping a class blog.

-I keep their homework posted, so when a student is absent, they know what they missed. Lots of other students (and parents) also depend on the homework feature to stay on top of things.

-Once the parents know about the blog, they can subscribe to follow it and will get email updates whenever I post something new.

-I can keep all fundraising and school event info on the site to inform parents.

-I can keep students informed of upcoming assignments, and parents informed of work that has gone home.

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Some other sites to look into for setting up your own class blog/website that I have found:

Weebly

TeacherWeb

Edmodo

You may want to double-check with your school tech person before you register a blog. Some districts block certain sites and you wouldn’t want to go through the work of setting up a website or blog for nothing!

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All in all, once your site is up, even if you just use it for homework and important updates – I think it’s a great investment of your time because of the connection it creates between home and school.

Do you have a class website or blog? What site do you use?