In the spirit of the start of the term this week’s Teach Tip Tuesday is about getting your students and parents on the same page as you from the start of the term.

This week’s tip: Share your term plan with your students and parents. 

I love the saying “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail”.

I think this is also true if you fail to share the journey that you are planning for the term with your students and parents. Let them share in what is coming and also be able to take ownership of completing the work that they might miss due to planned and unplanned absences. Each term I share my overall term plan which includes: topics, videos, additional activities, exercises to complete, key assessment dates and scheduled interruptions with both my students and their parents. Having all of the stakeholders on board at the start of the term with what they need to do is certainly a plan for success. Follow the link here to see an example of the planning that my students and parents receive. Plan 1 / Plan 2

My top suggestions on ways to share your plan: 

1. Post your plan on your digital classroom platform (whatever that may be: blackboard, google classroom etc). 

• This is my preferred option as I can update it as things change. This option also allows me to check who has viewed it.

2. Email the plan to all students and parents. 

• You could do a mail merge and send this as a bulk email to your parents and students. (Instructions here)
• You could also email the attachment through your school email service. We use IDattend.

3. Post the plan to all parents. 

• This would be my least preferred option as it is quiet expensive. However on a positive note it does ensure that each parent should receive a copy.

4. Print a copy for all students and have them paste it in their notebook

• You may want to combine this option with one of the others above.
• I print for classes that do not have laptops handy in class and do not print for the classes that do have laptops.

How do you share your term plan? Please share in the comments below or comment on our facebook page.