Team Newburgh's Reflection on Parent's Newsletter

Here is a link to our Parent's Newsletter. 
This newsletter was created by Liam, Janeen & Gina.

1) Why is communication important between teachers and parents?
Communication is important between parents and teachers for various reasons. First and foremost, a teacher spends significant amount of time with a parent’s child over the course of a school year.In some cases, if you want to know what’s up with the child, the teacher is an excellent source because they see them consistently. Opening up the lines of communication for the teacher and parent establishes a relationship where the main goal is the child’s progress and academic growth. It is important for both the parent and teacher to feel they can communicate with one another when it comes to concerns regarding the student.  If there has been a recent stressful event in the child’s life, the teacher should be informed so that he/she can take into consideration that information when observing the child’s academic performance and behavior. If a student is experiencing any problems they can be addressed more efficiently and effectively when the lines of communication are open. Additionally, the expectations for both the parent and teacher could be laid out so that both parties can work together to help support the child in a positive way.

2) In what way will you communicate with your students’ parents?
We will communicate with our students’ parents through our newsletter, class website, blog and wiki.  Students will be able to show off their work on the class wiki and blog and then it will illicit conversations at home when parents ask, “What did you do in school today?” Today many parents have the internet on their phones, which makes it easy to check on the class websites.  Many parents work long hours and this is a way for them to stay informed of what their child is doing in school.  We also agree that all these Web 2.0 pages are great, but it is also important to continue to meet in person when needed and to make phone calls when certain situations arise.

3) What new communications software applications would be fun to try to communicate with parents?
We think that it would be fun to use a program like Smilbox to make weekly or monthly newsletters for our class.  It would also be convenient use Skype if a parent cannot make a parent teacher conference. A class blog page will be a lot of fun too because parents and family members can comment on students’ work and that gives students a purpose and audience for their work.

4) What software did you use, why did you choose to use it?
We chose Smilebox first because it was free. It also had a nice layout and the colors were inviting. It was easy to use and very helpful. This is a site that we can each use individually, outside of this class, both professionally and personally, for a number of different reasons.
We can make newsletters, invitations, greetings, photo albums, and scrapbook all on one site. Plus, you can share in so many different ways such as through facebook, blogs, and e-mail, just to name a few.


5) How was it to collaborate on this project?
This project was a bit more difficult than the other projects because we all had hectic schedules this week and we learned that these programs do not save on the site, rather they save on a computer.  Therefore we all had to meet together to work on this and use the same computer.  The actual process of creating the newsletter was fun and easy. We thought it would be fun to make it a school newsletter and we could each add an article from our classroom. We all enjoyed this project and will all try to use this program in our classroom and in our lives.

6) What would you do differently if you did a Class Newsletter again?
We said that we would try to find another program that would allow us to work on the newsletter, save it to the site, and then work on it again at another location.  Teachers are busy and it would be a lot more convenient if it would save and we could finish it at another time.