RemindText
Send whole class texts regarding homework, school events, class parties, field trips, upcoming tests, picture day, etc. A great function is that you can access your account online or on your smartphone via an app. You can leave voice messages, upload pictures, and
even have the option of texting your students' parents individually.
Google Forms
You must have a Gmail account in order to access Google Forms. This is a great tool that allows you to get answers from your students/parents and automatically inputs it to a Google Sheet. You can use this to collect data, survey your students and their families, and even create assessments. I've used it to gather beginning-of-the-year information from the parents and to narrow down my superlative awards at the end of the year.
Google Docs
I use this to create my one-page weekly recap where I include a link to the week's Storify that shows the past week's class tweets from Twitter. I quickly recap or look ahead to what they'll be doing in class. You can download it as a PDF and email to your parents or include it in the RemindText.
Shutterfly
This may take some time to set up at the beginning of the year, but this is a great resource for your room parent. You and your parents can also safely add pictures of class parties and school events on this closed website. Only members who are added by the administrator may log in.
SeeSaw
A portfolio-type website for students to add and tag their work, pictures, writing, etc. Parents are able to join and comment. This is a very student-friendly website that provides collaboration and sharing of student work.
SignUp Genius
Do you want to save your money and time from going to the grocery store to pick up items for your upcoming STE(A)M activity, class party, math or science lesson? Create a sign-up with specific items and share the link with your parents via RemindText and/or group email. I even used this to have classes sign up to come visit our living history museum.
YOUR Phone Number
Repeat after me...IT IS NOT TABOO TO GIVE MY STUDENTS' PARENTS MY CELL PHONE NUMBER. The reason why I started doing this was that I didn't have a telephone in my classroom to call during my planning time. Even if I did have a phone in my classroom, I never would have time because of my limited planning. If I call someone's mom or dad, I would have to trek down to the main office and find an empty workroom to call. This was very inconvenient for so many reasons.
At the beginning of the year, I just input their names, cell phone numbers, and house address. This way, I can quickly get a hold of them if I need to. It became very handy to call from my cell phone because I always had that on me. Since parents respected my time outside of school hours I never had a problem with parents calling during outrageous hours. Also, they always texted if they had to reach me. Anything regarding behavior or their grades, just call them and quickly answer their questions.
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