Back to School Ideas for Middle & High School Teachers: Getting To Know Your Students

This #2ndaryELA Twitter chat was all about preparing for back to school. Middle school and high school English Language Arts teachers discussed collecting student information, what to include in a syllabus, important routines and procedures for the first week, forming relationships with students, and building partnerships with parents.

Read through the chat below for ideas on what student information to collect to enhance your lessons: interests, reading history, learning styles, etc. You'll see examples of how to make your syllabus more visually appealing and learn what other teachers emphasize on day one. You'll also find ways to get to know your students and communicate with their parents.

Hope you'll join us next Tuesday August 2nd at 8pm EST to talk about curriculum and unit planning. We'd also love for you to join our 2ndaryELA Facebook group (even if you aren't on Twitter). 2ndaryELA is a group of middle and high school English Language Arts teachers looking to share ideas and best practices. This group is an extension of our Twitter chat and a place for collaboration, questions, and encouragement. Feel free to post teaching ideas, success stories, resource links, photos, etc. that will enhance our instruction. 

Parent Communication: It's Not Just For Elementary School

Last week's #2ndaryELA Twitter chat was all about parent communication in the ELA classroom. Middle and High School English Language Arts discussed parent communication best practices for positive and negative academics/behaviors, technology tips, and ways to involve students in the process. The highlights are below.

Tips for Communicating the Positives:

*Positive praise is appreciated at all grade levels.
*Offer positive calls home as an incentive.
*Tell the student about the call, send a note home with them, or call with them there so they get the good vibes too.
*At the beginning of this year, print address labels for each kid. Every week find 5 kids to send home a positive postcard.
*Positive & frequent. Parents want to know what's going on & support teachers when they feel involved thru updates.

Tips for Communicating the Negatives:

*Document everything! Take notes during calls, save emails, copy notes from home. Always frame as doing what's best for students.
*Be ahead of the curve! Make contact before it becomes a problem, and document all attempted contacts.
*Make contact with parents as close to day 1 as possible so you have an established a relationship before you make that negative call.
*It needs to be immediate. Doesn't help when it is a few days after the fact!
*For academics, don't call the last week unless you want all the work turned in the last week.
*Offer some strategies to help with the issue. Some parents don't know how to approach the problem.

Let Technology Help You: 

*Mailchimp can be used for sending weekly emails

*Twitter can be used for praising students

*Instagram can be used for sharing photos of great work

*Remind can be used for reminders about homework, upcoming due dates or events

*Program all parents' phone numbers in your cell phone so you can call from anywhere, and don't have to look up the number.
*Create groups in your email.

*Use a Google form to input parent contacts and create a spreadsheet.

Getting Students Involved:

* Let the students know ahead of time if possible. No one likes surprises.
*Have the students call their parent(s) with you sitting right next to them (after class)
*Use students' homework planner as a place for communication between home & school. so students see what is being written.

Hope you'll join us next week, Tuesday September 9th at 8pm EST to discuss using nonfiction in the ELA classroom. The questions for next week's chat will be posted here on Sunday. If you missed last Tuesday night's chat, scroll down and read the whole thing below.

#2ndaryELA Twitter Chat Topic: Parent Communication

Brynn Allison, The Literary Maven & Kristy, 2 Peas and a Dog are hosting #2ndaryELA on Twitter every Tuesday evening from 8 - 9 PM EST. #2ndaryELA is a weekly chat for secondary English Language Arts teachers focused on a topic. Every Sunday, we will post the topic and questions on our blogs to allow you to prepare for the upcoming Tuesday evening's chat. Thank you to everyone who joined us last week and we hope that you will join us again.

Looking for the recap? Click on the image below.

On Tuesday, August 25, our #2ndaryELA chat will focus on parent communication in the ELA classroom.

The Format:

8:00 Intros: What and where do you teach? Include a link to your blog if you have one. #2ndaryELA
8:05 Q1: What is your approach to parent communication? (how, when, how often, etc.) #2ndaryELA
8:15 Q2: What are your tips/best practices for contact about positive behavior/academics #2ndaryELA
8:25 Q3: What are your tips/best practices for contact about negative behavior/academics? #2ndaryELA
8:35 Q4: How do you use technology to help you communicate with parents & keep track of contacts? #2ndaryELA

8:45 Q5: Do you involve students in the parent contact process? How so? #2ndaryELA

The Directions:
1. Log into Twitter on Tuesday from 8-9 PM EST.
2. Search for tweets with the hashtag #2ndaryELA in the search bar. Make sure to click “All tweets.”
3. Introductions are for the first 5 minutes.
4. Starting at 8:05 (@literarymaven or @2peasandadog) will post questions every 10 minutes using the format Q1, Q2, Q3, etc. and the hashtag #2ndaryELA.
5. Respond to questions using the format A1, A2, A3, etc. with #2ndaryELA.
6. Follow any teachers responding and who are also using #2ndaryELA.
7. Like and respond to other teachers' tweets.

You can schedule your responses to the questions ahead of time using a scheduler like TweetDeck or HootSuite (but don't forget to use A1, A2, etc. and #2ndaryELA). Links are encouraged, so be sure to use a link shortener like tinyurl, bitly, goo.gl or ow.ly Just visit one of those links and paste your long link to shorten it for Twitter. Using images is also encouraged when relevant.

New to chats? Here are the rules:
1. Stay on topic & stay positive!
2. Please do not post or promote paid products unless specifically asked.
3. If you arrive late, try to look through other posts before beginning.
4. Feel free to just read, like, and/or retweet.
5. Always use our hashtag #2ndaryELA, including in your replies to others.
6. Make sure your twitter feed is set to public. (Also keep in mind that Twitter is completely public – that means students, parents, and administrators can and will read what you tweet.)

Be sure to spread the word to any teacher friends who might be interested in joining us as well. We look forward to chatting with you Tuesday evening!
Get caught up on past chats here:

Get Organized & Stay on Top of Assignments With Homework Calendars

Each year I have tried something different for homework for these two reasons:

1. My students, at least too many of them, don't "do" homework. It doesn't seem to matter how much or little is assigned, how easy or difficult, how "fun" or not. (I teach ninth grade English in an urban area, where for a variety of reasons homework is not a priority for many students.)

2. As a teacher given $100 for supplies each year and no paper, making copies for five classes of thirty students doesn't make me feel good when those copies get stuffed into book bags, dropped in the hallway, left behind in the classroom, etc.

Year 1 was a short and sweet approach. Students were assigned a one page (front and back) vocabulary sheet for homework. The vocabulary, usually 10 terms, connected to the week's text. On Fridays, I gave students a quick multiple-choice vocabulary quiz to help hold them accountable for doing their homework.

Year 2, I stuck with the one page vocabulary homework, but started limiting the students' time for the vocabulary quiz to five minutes. If they did their homework, they got it done, no problem. If they didn't do their homework, the whole period wouldn't be wasted on a 10 question multiple-choice quiz. because I had smaller classes (my school had a limited number of novels), I also started assigning students independent reading as part of their homework. Sometimes students had a choice of novels, sometimes I selected one for them. Students were assigned a certain number of pages a week to read and had to complete a certain number of comprehension questions. At the end of each novel, students completed a project or essay.

Year 3, I moved to a different school and went back to just the one page vocabulary homework.

Year 4, I switched schools again. Same one page vocabulary homework, but I also wanted increase the amount of nonfiction my students were reading. I created a series of one page nonfiction articles connected to the themes of the texts (primarily fiction) being read in class. On the back side of each article, students had a choice of paragraph formats to use to respond to the article. The paragraph formats helped to support my struggling writers and I also printed a lower level version of the article for my students with really low reading levels.

My initial nonfiction article set has general high-interest topics for teens. I also created set of Holocaust related readings to accompany my unit on Night, a set of hero/journey readings to accompany my unit on The Odyssey, and a set of drama/film related readings to accompany my unit on Romeo & Juliet. I loved these nonfiction homework assignments and could see an improvement in the writing of the students who completed them, but unfortunately too many students weren't doing them, which meant a whole lot of paper was getting wasted.

Year 5, I thought I had THE solution. I decided to continue with vocabulary based homework, but did a complete 180 on how I taught vocabulary. Instead of using vocabulary selected from weekly in-class texts, I decided to teach root-based vocabulary. Each week students were assigned a root and five words that shared that root.

For homework, students selected three assignments per week from a vocabulary choice board. Each week, the students would have a new root and five new words (printed on a half sheet of paper), but the homework choices remained the same, which meant waaaay less copying and wasted paper. The choice board had 30-40 choice in the categories of practice/word relationships, writing, visualization, and kinesthetic/movement. Students were not allowed to repeat choices within a month.

I also created a class website where I posted videos related in-class concepts and topics. As part of their homework, students were asked to watch and respond to the videos. This presented additional issues. Many of my students don't have computers with internet access at home and the website didn't seem to work reliably on cell phones, so I had to offer alternatives to this online homework. I also had to monitor the students' posts and remember to assign the homework. My use of the class website as part of homework was spotty at best throughout the year.

This year, year 6, my homework routine changed for different reasons. I loved my root-based vocabulary from the previous year, but my school decided to purchase a vocabulary books for all four grades, and since we were spending the money on the books, we were expected to use them. I also wanted to incorporate independent reading again.

I knew I would have to find a way to keep both myself and my students accountable. Posting the assignments in class daily or weekly would be a waste of precious class time plus I could forget to do it, students could choose not to copy it down, and it would be a nightmare to keep up with students who were frequently absent. And that is when I came up with my brilliant idea, homework calendars!

Homework calendars are exactly what they sound like, a calendar of homework assignments. I printed a homework calendar for each month, broken down by week and then by day.

Homework calendars are awesome because:
1. Students always have their assignments even if they are absent, mentally absent, come late, go to the nurse's office, etc.
2. I can't forget to assign it.
3. No time is wasted copying it down.
4. It is easy for students to catch up on assignments and even work ahead if they want.
5. It makes homework assignments clear for parents, and can easily be emailed or given out at Back to School Night or parent/teacher conferences.
6. It can be created, copied, and handed out every few weeks or monthly.
7. You can make your homework calendar as detailed as you want and then send shorter messages via text using Remind.

Creating a homework calendar requires some advance planning, but is definitely worth it!

Simplify Parent and Student Communication with Remind

As teachers, our time is so precious because we always seem to have so little of it, yet so many things to accomplish, so you should know about Remind. It is a tool that will make communication with parents and/or students easier.

Wouldn't you love to be able to make less phone calls and contact all of your parents or students at once? Remind allows you to keep in touch with parents and/or students without them having your cell phone number or you needing theirs.

The sign up process is simple and you can use your Google login, so then there is no extra username and password to remember.

Before your users can sign up, you need to decide how many classes or groups you will have and create each one.

Because I teach high school, I have one class/group for all of my parents and then separate classes for each of the class periods I teach during the day (English 1 Period 1/2, English 1 Period 6, Creative Writing Period 4, English 1 Honors Period 7/8).

This allows me to send important messages to all of my parents at once about important dates and reminders (conferences, concerts, marking periods ending).

I set up separate classes for each period I teach so I could send out different messages as needed about homework, supplies, etc. You can always play around with just one class and add more as you go on.

Once you have created a class, there are two ways people can sign up and join that class. The first option asks the individual signing up to send a text message to the phone number listed with the message listed. Make sure the message entered is exactly what is displayed on the screen (yes they need to put in the @ symbol).

If done correctly, the service will send a text message back letting them know that enrollment was successful and asking for their name. After that, there is no reason to text that number again.

You may want to let parents and/or students know that that number is NOT your phone number and they cannot reach you through it. It is for sign-up purposes only.

You can print a PDF of this invitation to hand out to students or parents. I included it in my syllabus packet at the start of the year. You can also display it in class and give students time to sign up then or display it at Back to School Night or conferences for parents.

The second option is to encourage students and/or parents to sign up is by sending the invitation directly to their email. Simply list the email addresses of all of the individuals you want to include and the invitation with directions will be sent to them.

Once you have your classes all set up and people subscribed, on your home screen you will see all of your classes on the left and all of your subscribers on the right.

The top center is where you select who a message will be sent to (you can select multiple classes), write the message and either send it or schedule a day and time for it to be sent. The bottom center lists all of your sent and scheduled messages.

So what kind of messages do I send? To parents I send reminders about Back to School Night, report card conferences, upcoming school events (concerts, sporting events, etc.), and upcoming due dates for projects, tests, etc.

Because you can schedule the messages ahead of time means no last minute rush to notify parents of report conferences the next day. Schedule your message now, or schedule all of your messages for that kind of thing if you know the dates ahead of time, and forget about it.

To students, I send a nightly message about homework. Because I plan out my homework on a monthly/unit basis I also schedule these in advance in chunks at a time.

I also send out the occasional shout out, praise, or encouragement to a few students or to a class (you can't send messages to one individual).

Some other features that I haven't really tried out yet are the "stamps," attachments, and voice clips. When you send out a message or a message with a question, users can "stamp" to show their response. You can also attach photos, documents, or PDFs. Let's say you are reminding students and/or parents about an upcoming test; attach the review sheet to the message.

If you download the Remind app you can send voice messages, not just text messages. You don't have to download the app onto your phone though to use Remind; everything can be done online just as easily and the best part is that it is completely FREE.

I hope that you will try out Remind and that it will make at least one part of teaching easier for you!

How to Build Positive Parent Partnerships From the Very First Day of School

I teach in a comprehensive urban high school. My students are the ones who weren't accepted to a lottery-based or selective admission high school in our district. Translation: my students are the ones no other school wanted, often because of their behavior issues.

Managing behavior consumes a lot of my time, sometimes more time than lesson planning and teaching, so being able to quickly and easily contact parents is important. I need parents to work with me to support their child and in order for that to happen, I start building a relationship with them from the very first day of school. This is important regardless of the "type" of students you teach. Here are some tips on how to do that.

Tip 1: Attach parent and student surveys to your syllabus. These should be handed out on the first day of school and ask for parent contact information. Make it count for a grade so students have an incentive to return it. I also give out copies of the survey at Back to School Night to any parents who have not yet filled it out. You can find printable, editable, and Google Form versions of my parent and student surveys here.

In my parent survey, I collect contact information, but also give parents the opportunity to share their child’s strengths and weaknesses, how their child learns best, possible distractions for their child, and any other important information they might want to share. Parents will often share information about medical conditions, past or present emotional or traumatic experiences the student may be dealing with, etc. As this type of information may not even be a part of a student’s file, I find this information invaluable.

Tip 2: Call all parents on the first day of school. If that isn't feasible, shoot for at least the first week. This allows you to introduce yourself and create a positive relationship before any problems arise. This is also how I figure out which students' phone numbers don't work and can start working on finding ones that do work.

Tip 3: Save parents' numbers in your phone. This will save you time later when you are hunting for a number AND you can call parents anywhere: at school, at home, sitting in the parking lot, waiting in line somewhere. I do a lot of calls on my drive home from school with my hands-free headset. Another plus is when parents call you back, you'll know who is calling if the number is saved in your phone.

Tip 4: Log all of your parent contact for documentation purposes. Everything you do is to help your students but you also can never do enough to protect yourself. When I first started teaching, I would create a word document for each of my students where I kept a running log of each phone call, email, detention, conference, etc. When a student's behavior warranted disciplinary action, I had a whole list of the interventions I put in place before referring the student to the dean or principal.

Navigating through all of those Word documents became cumbersome, so now I use a Google Form version where I can enter all parent communication and then create a spreadsheet which can be sorted, downloaded and printed as needed. You can find printable, fillable PDF form, and Google Form versions of that parent contact log here.

Tip 5: Call before little stuff becomes big stuff, and call for the good stuff too. Don't wait until that student who is growing increasingly hostile explodes on you. A phone call home may reveal a larger issue out of your control, but if you know about it you can be a little more sensitive to a student's needs or emotional state.

If it's negative, I can't emphasize the importance of calling over emailing a parent. Tone can be misinterpreted in emails, while in a phone call, parents can hear your desire to work with them to help their student. You can always send a follow up email afterwards to document the conversation.

And parents don't want to just hear from you when their child is acting up. Try to make positive phone calls every so often about good behavior, good grades, etc. to maintain a positive relationship with your parents.