Parent Information Prezi

At the beginning of the school year at my school, parents are invited into the classroom for an information evening with the class teacher. Generally, turnout is pretty high and (I hope like many other teachers) it can be a bit nerve-wracking. Ask me to speak in front of a group of children and I'm fine; put me in front of parents and I'm a knock-kneed, trembly-voiced wreck. So I like to be prepared.

This last week I've spent many of my spare moments (read: while my toddler is napping) recreating my parent presentation.

Last school year, my Prezi for parents included lots of specific details about school routines and procedures as well as more general information about curriculum and learning in Grade 4. So, for much of the time we were together, I talked about timetabling, who to contact when and how, procedures for discipline, absences etc etc etc - all those institutional necessities. I also talked about general goals for language and maths (spelling program, goals for writing and reading, consolidation and some extension of basic facts, problem-solving) and our Units of Inquiry. And of course, I talked a bit about my own background with a few lame attempts at humour here and there. All in all, it wasn't a terrible presentation. Except that parents left that night without really knowing what learning was going to look like in my classroom.

At the time, it made sense to structure it like this: I was just coming back to teaching after two years out of the classroom and quite a bit of professional development so I didn't feel ready to give specific details about what learning would look like in my class. I was working in a new grade level with a new team and I wasn't sure how all of this 'newness' would pan out. Too many variables.

However, this year I'm going out on a limb and making quite a change.

First up, all the time spent outlining routines and procedures will be significantly reduced. I am putting together a handout for parents with all that information in bullet points. I'm not going to go through each point on the handout, just say 'It's all there, if you want to talk about it, we can, but I'd much rather take the time to talk about learning.'. I feel a bit nervous about this; after all, if I hammer the point home that all children must be at school by 0830, then no child ever has an excuse to be late, right? Even so, I've decided I'm going to give these 4th grade parents a break - I'm guessing they know the drill by now.

Second, I'm going to use a bunch of photos from last year's class. See, parents? This is what Maths class looks like, and this and this and this. Here we are taking photos and video, this is us learning about how search engines work and here we are looking stuff up in books and writing stories longhand. And here's reading and writing and discussion and all the other great stuff that we do.

Third, and this is the one I'm feeling good about: we're going to have the laptops in class with us for the presentation. Parents are going to have a turn with the online homework, I'm going to run them through the Maths revision video (my class is not flipped, but that's for another post), the Google form for Maths problems and the games. If they want, they can even see how the Maths grading works, and I'd really like to give them a few minutes to write some comments on the class blog.

Anyway, here's a look at my Prezi so far. It's clearly a work in progress and you can't see my photos for privacy reasons, but you get the idea, I hope.

Next on the Back to School agenda: organising excellent activities to get to know my students, refamiliarising myself with my first Unit of Inquiry and beginning of year Maths. Oh, and continuing to LOVE my holidays :).