Planning a Back to School Night (In Person or From a Distance)
So, does anyone know what their school year is going to look like next year? Anyone? It’s mid-July now, and my district here a little south of Nashville, TN just re-announced their plan…we are going all remote. Yikes!
Some districts around us have followed suit. Others are stead-fast with the in-person teaching model for those who want to. So it’s kind of a mix of everything around here! I’m guessing that clubs and after-school activities will be mostly a goner, even if some sort of in-person teaching is happening.
This is what I also am guessing: things like back to school night are going to be altered in some capacity. Either we will have it in person, with masks and as little contact as possible, we will host something virtually, or we will just send all of our info in an email and call it a day.
However it goes, I wanted to make sure that my Open House pack included totally paperless options to make your life a little easier! No matter what your district mandates, I wanted you to have it mostly done for you. This time is too wild and too stressful for the little details like ‘parent night’ to throw you off your game or absorb any of your energy. Scroll below to see the pieces of my new, paperless parent night resource pack!
Paperless Parent Night
Parent Flip Book
The printable version of the flip book was originally intended to be a cute takeaway for your parents after your Parent Night presentation. You could host all of your most critical information in it, and parents could keep it somewhere handy to find your planning time, room extension, grading policy, behavior management system, etc. all in one, adorable place!
You can still totally use the printable version with distance learning. Mail them to families with a letter introducing yourself, or have a class set prepped and ready to go during some sort of drive-by meet the teacher event hosted by your school!
But, if you want to be totally digital about it, there is a powerpoint file of this same flip book included in your download! You can email it to parents as a follow-up to your Zoom parent night, or after an in-person presentation where you didn’t provide any handouts to mitigate contact.
Meet the Teacher Powerpoint
This stayed just about the same between in-person learning days and now. The only difference is I added a slide to cover distance learning protocols if you want to add them in! You can delete these slides if they don’t apply to your particular school situation. This powerpoint can be emailed to parents, presented in your classroom, or you can share you screen during a video call.
Open House Forms and Reminders
If you’re hosting a virtual Open House, you may not really need a ‘sign in’ form to keep a record of who was in attendance. But you may still want some way to gather student names with parent names and email addresses to connect families together. You also may need parent volunteers for one reason or another, so these forms became digital just in case! Simply email to all of the parents in your class, or create a link to your forms and create a QR code for parents to scan at an in-person Parent Night.
Helping Hands Sticky Notes
The idea behind ‘helping hands’ sticky notes is for parents to grab a sticky note off of your door on the way out of your parent night with an item on your wishlist. Because each parent is only touching one sticky note, you could potentially still print these off and do this during an in-person gathering!
But, if you’re wanting to go totally digital, a new digital slide has been added to this download! You type in what you need for your distance learning experience (or in-person teaching. or blended learning…), and link it to that item on Amazon or another vendor. Parents can click on the link and drag one of the red X’s over the ‘helping hand’ when they’ve purchased something. You will want to share this one slide with all of your parents so they can all see when something has been purchased!
And there you have it! A Back to School Parent Night…with a paperless twist!
The printable and digital listings are all included in the same listing, to save you the inconvenience of needed to purchase something else in the future if you need to go printable again! Buy it now, and use it for life! Free updates will always be included. :)
