Collection

Building Strong Relationships With Parents

and Strengthening Students' Chances for Academic Success

  • Grades: PreK–K, 1–2, 3–5, 6–8, 9–12

Building mutual trust with students' parents helps you build a strong foundation for learning. Preparing for Parent-Teacher Conferences? Print out this student-observation form to organize your thoughts on students' strengths and areas where they need to improve. Ask parents to fill out a record of their own observations. Throughout the year, you can keep parents updated on classroom news via your own site created with our Class Homepage Builder.

Looking for resources for your students' families? Point them to our School Involvement guide, written for parents who want to be more active in their child's education. Discover more creative and effective ideas on how to stay connected to parents and motivate them to become more involved in the classroom in the articles below, and in our Teacher Advisors' parent communication strategies.

Articles

Teaching Tip: Newsletters Made Easy

Here are step-by-step instructions on how to create and use a newsletter template to keep in touch with 25-30 different households.

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Teaching Tip: Creative Communication with Caregivers

Appear more approachable and encourage parents to contact you by adopting these eight tips.
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Teaching Tip: Quick and Easy Parent Communication

A teacher reveals the convenience and benefits of communicating with parents via postcards.
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10, 9, 8…Countdown to Open School Night

Is open school night fast approaching? Here are 44 tips, activity ideas, and last-minute reminders to guarantee a great back-to-school celebration.

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Speaking Their Language

Follow these simple steps for communicating with parents whose first language is not English, so that you can encourage families to support student learning outside the classroom.

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Parent Conferences: Take-Home

New teachers, make a board that you can use to organize take-home notes. First year teachers will also find these that these ideas come in handy for tracking progress towards students'goals.

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Planning for Parent Conferences

If you're a new teacher about to hold you first parent-teacher conferences, use these helpful resources for planning. They include sample forms, suggestions for the setting arrangement, and advice on conducting the conference. First year teachers can use them for years to come.
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Teacher Tips for Successful Parent-Teacher Conferences

Seasoned teachers share their secrets on how to prepare for parent-teacher conferences. Suggestions focus on how to present strengths and weaknesses of students thoughtfully.

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Let Your Students Take the Lead

Learn the benefits of student-lead conferences. When students take the lead, parents and teachers alike gain insight about the child's learning.

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Respect for Parents

A special education teacher stresses the importance of positive communication with parents and caregivers of special needs children facing difficulties in school. These suggestions will help you meet the challenges of maintaining communication, empathy, and understanding.
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We're All Welcome Here

A wealth of teacher-tested ideas for drawing all families into the school community.

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Top 5 Ways to Use Parent Volunteers!

See strategies that work such as deputizing a class mom and hosting monthly family nights.
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Policies & Practices: Family Communications - Ideas That Really Work

During this time of parent conferences and open houses, teachers need to keep in mind that communication must happen all year long. To open lines of communication with parents, relationships must be respectful, reciprocal, inclusive, thoughtful, and planned.
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Tough Talks: When Parents Won't Get Involved

Politis presents several suggestions-things to consider for parents who choose not to be involved in school activities. She stresses to keep in mind the importance of respecting parents'choices, while continuing to provide opportunities for them to be engaged in the program.
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Policies & Practices: Successful Parent Conferences

Wilford discusses the wide variety of approaches to conferencing with parents that can be seen in early childhood centers and schools.
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Top 5 Ideas for Open House

Great open house ideas for new teachers. First year teachers, see how an open house night can provide opportunities for teachers to gain parents'support.

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