Home School Communication

We've only been in school for a month but I think I've communicated with parents more in this month than in any other complete year :/ Many of you know what I'm talking about :) So I've had to keep a log which is something that I should have been doing anyway, but never got around to it. Here are two different communication logs. I use the simple one, but a great coworker emailed us the cutesy one. Hope these are useful to someone. If you happen to use them I would love to hear from you :)

 

Simple communication log

Cutesy communication log

Organizing Home Communication Info.

I'm sure many of you have your own way of collecting information from parents and organizing it, but I thought I'd share mine. It has served me well the last couple of years and it's fairly simple.

The first time important papers go home I send home this Home Communication Questionnaire. I would love to send it home with the welcome letter before school starts, but since the rest of my team doesn't do this and I do receive my class list until right before school starts, I don't. I asks parents to fill in the basics: names, occupations (useful for guests during community workers unit), numbers, addresses, e-mails. But it also asks about student allergies (VERY IMPORTANT), any other information parents want me to know, and how they would like to volunteer. I work at a charter school and we require parents to complete 20 volunteer hours per student per year. Now if only everyone actually did it . . . . that's another story.

I copy it onto the brightest most colorful copy paper I have so that parents see it and I can see it at a glance in student files throughout the year. You can get much of the contact information from the emergency cards but believe it or not many parents don't tell the truth about their info. At least where I work. They are much more likely to provide truthful numbers and addresses to myself than the office. Take some time the first month to verify this information with a positive phone call home . . . just to make sure.

As students return their questionnaires I begin inputting the most important contact info into this Home Communication Spreadsheet. I don't like how it came out in google docs, so if you would like the PDF or editable word format just e-mail me. I simply type in the student's and parents' names in the first column. I also type in RED any allergies/health information as well as any other red flags (such as parents are separated: court order only mom can pick up - no dad). Unfortunately this was one of my cases this year. Sad but true. Then I fill out each successive column. I just print it out when I have them all and place one in my teacher binder, one in my emergency backpack, one in my sub folder, and one near (but hidden) near my classroom phone. That way I have easy access to all of their info!

If you use any of these I'd love to hear from you! I'd also love to hear how you obtain and organize your parent/student contact information :) Drop me a note.