Parent Letters

I strongly believe in the importance of creating a relationship with my students' families. One way that I attempted to do this during my student teaching placement was to send home a "Meet the Student Teacher" letter so that the families could know a bit about the person teaching their children. ​

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Throughout this placement, I also found templates of recognition notes on TeachersPay Teachers and made it my goal to send home at least one note per week. I found it very helpful to print out multiple copies of each template to make it easy to grab and fill out throughout the busy day. Oftentimes, the front was just a reminder for me to finish writing a note later, considering I took this idea one step further by writing a personalized note on the back of the paper detailing exactly what happened that made me take note of the student, with a date and my signature. That way, if the parent happened to keep the note, they would have a record of what their child was doing in Kindergarten to get recognized. I loved seeing the reactions on my students' faces when they heard that they were getting a positive note sent home about how proud I was of their achievements. ​

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This idea was expanded upon even further regarding one of the classroom management strategies that I implemented, Warm and Fuzzies. At the beginning of student teaching, I read my students the story of the "Warm Fuzzies," before presenting them with a box full of them. From then on, if I saw a student go above and beyond while performing an act of kindness, I would allow them to take their own "Warm Fuzzy" home. Then, I would fill out the slip, write a note explaining what they did and why I was so impressed, and send it home with the child to show their families. Again, I loved doing this. I thought it was amazing to see how happy the students would get to recieve one, and it made me very happy to share their kindness with their family. 

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