Weekly Student-Authored E-mails Home on Progress

Inspired by a blog by Catlin Tucker (@catlin_tucker), I decided to have my students e-mail home every week. Catlin explained how she has students e-mail parents when they fall behind. Since I was shifting to a workshop model, I thought this activity would help include families more as well as keep students engaged with our learning activities. Also, the use of daily work logs ensures we have a record of what we have been doing in class so we have something specific to report on each week.

I have done one of these e-mails home so far, but I thought I’d share my early process here.

Daily Work Logs

As part of our workshop model, I began including a Daily Work Log via Google, where each student lists the assignments and work he or she must complete each day. These work logs become a great resource for the weekly e-mails. This is a process to teach students goal-setting and subdividing larger tasks into smaller pieces (even if they can accomplish multiple pieces in one day during class. Our work log has our daily goals (I have been giving suggestions on what to include here at the start of the semester), and then further down in the document are our learning targets for the unit. I may leave comments in their log or next to a specific target. Here are some examples:

Full disclosure: I have not gotten to every student this past week, so not every student has feedback from me. Please do not think this process is magical and working 100% yet! Budgeting time to reach every student and balancing how much written feedback to leave in their daily logs is a task I am still refining—of course, sometimes there is a quick question I answer, or my mini-lesson answers their concerns.

Weekly E-mails Home

When students have their syllabus signed, we ask for parent e-mail addresses (or if not, we can use Remind or print the letter and have the student take it home to be signed). Parents do not need to respond to this e-mail, but some have with words of encouragement to their students.

Students then use their Daily Logs to review what they have accomplished and summarize their work. In future weeks, they will be able to refer back to my comments and feedback (and scores on assessments) to add specificity.

Students are to write the letter in Google, copy it into an e-mail, address it to their parent(s), CC me (and any IEP or GIEP casemanager), and title it “Last Name, Weekly English Update Month/Day” (ex: Emmanuele, Weekly English Update 1/24).

I tried to look over everyone’s before they hit “send,” but since I am CC’d, I can follow up later if need be. As we move ahead, I will know the students I need to talk with (if they are missing assignments that they should explain to parents, etc.)

Here is the template I provided for my students on Google:

 

I was excited to see parent responses of encouragement. I told each of my classes that if they normally communicate with parents in a language other than English that we can type in another language (if the student can write in a home language, as I was unsure if I could trust Google translate). One student speaks Korean at home, so he used his phone to type in Korean; he typed it in English and Korean. It’s a little more work for him, but I was excited to see him engage with this process to best communicate with home (and I am trusting his honesty—but since the English is also included, I know he at least is reflecting on his work).

Moving Ahead

This process so far is very exciting. The weekly e-mails may become more complicated as we begin balancing more assignments and work during workshop, but since we have workshop time, I am dedicating every Wednesday to this home communication to better include parents and encourage students to reflect on their work and plan ahead.

Now, since we have completed one week of e-mails and parents have received them, I am committed—this is not an initiative I can now dissolve, since we’ve already begun!