Teacher Ideas and Advice

Building Respectful Boundaries….Establishing Clear Communication with Administrators

Starting the School Year Strong!

I have just gotten my first teaching job! What follow-up questions should I ask?

1. When will my classroom be available for me to come in?
2. Are their professional development options or requirements before the school year starts?
3. Is there a budget for school supplies that is available to me?
4. Can I have a school list of all staff members on campus? (Look for the names of the office managers, custodians, and librarians so that you can reach out for support with supplies, classroom textbooks and furniture)
5. Who are the teachers that I will be working most closely with….can I have their emails? Reach out to them to introduce yourself, but know that they may not get back to you right away.
6. Are their mentors or coaches available for me to work with….can I have their emails? Reach out to them to introduce yourself, but know that they may not get back to you right away.

Family or End of Year “Open House” Events:

Advice and Materials

• 2nd and 3rd Grade Multiplication Array City: Family visitors would love to see a variety of subject matter during these special school evenings. This is an example of something particular to 2nd and 3rd grade and it covers the subject of math, while also allowing students the opportunity to share the process of “building arrays” with their families. Each skyscraper represents a different multiplication problem, with the windows creating the array.

• Gallery Art Wall: If you have one space in your classroom or a hallway to showcase previous work or topics from the beginning of the year, I strongly recommend it. This could also be an opportunity for student choice, if you had a set of projects and each students selected their favorite to showcase on the wall, it would add an extra level of pride for your students.

• Cereal Box Projects: These particular projects were biography research, but you can use another research topic or any chapter book. The cereal boxes were planned for and collected earlier in the year, covered with colored butcher paper or construction paper, and the back showcases a report style template for students to fill in and glue on the back. The Biography Cereal Box Project is available for purchase in the resources shop tab. If you wish to have this be a school project instead of an at home project, you will want to disregard some of the front cover directions.

• Mother’s Day Project or Special Person Project: Depending on when you have your end of year family event, it is a wonderful surprise for families to have a featured gift for a family member to take home. Art for Kids Hub has wonderful drawing topics (flowers, cartoons, origami, holiday, etc.) If you have an Art Specialist Teacher or you are one, this could be a great collaborative effort with your school site to showcase and connect with school families. Hallways or multipurpose rooms could then become a gallery walk of student work.

Family Connection Ideas

1. Have students create a hand made invitation to these special school events. Despite our many efforts to engage families with school, sometimes it takes a special invitation from their child to encourage attendance. Here is a free template!
2. When families visit the school you want it to be a positive and interactive experience! This means that you will want to keep your classroom library out, math manipulatives, and other opportunities for students to “teach” their families concepts that they have been learning in school.
3. Showcase other events during the school year, by displaying pictures of field trips, family night events, collaborative projects, spirit days, jogathon, etc. Make sure that you have permission from all families to take pictures and that you have checked with your school/district expectations with photo/video permission. The pictures can be made into a photo board or displayed electronically with music.
4. Purchase a “Jenga” or other type of block set and have each family member decorate a block. This project gives your classroom a sense of collective community and can be raffled off as a fun game at the end of the year for a student/family to take home. What a nice memory of their class!
5. Have families leave a special note on their child’s desk, before they leave the event. This will encourage family connection and give caregivers an opportunity to do a hand written note, which students sometime rarely see. This could be the very encouragement a child needs to write in the classroom. The free download is in the resources shop tab.