Love the visual question! I am a first grade teacher. I communicate regularly what we are learning and what the child needs practice with. We work on reading fluency, words, phrases, and passages. I communicate what is going well and what they need to practice.

Each family gets a full report every 9 weeks with grades, formal assessment reports, growth, etc. I just feel like parents need more than that no matter the level. If they are struggling or in need of a challenge I send ideas and activities. This has resulted in continued growth for the child and parents that trust the process.
For struggling students I do ask to meet in person more than the twice a year parent teacher conferences. I feel face to face explanation is important as we use interventions and plan for the best for their child. Team Ransey is more successful when all caregivers are on the same page.

I use conferences as a springboard to see who needs more communication than others. I use periodic emails to flag certain issues before they become big. Then I try not to forget good news when it happens. I often will write a short newsletter about every other week to tell parents what concepts we learned and special events that may come up.

Since I did both arrival and dismissals, I made it a point to communicate with parents then, even if just to say hi. For me locking into a set way to communicate is an expectation that’s may get in the way of focusing on the real work of teaching and learning.

I send home a weekly reminder to parents to check FOCUS, the platform we use for grading. I send home a progress alert every 3 weeks for the first 2 9 weeks and then reduce the frequency as the year goes on. I also train my students how to check their grades and progress through the programs we use.

Our school is getting ready to send home report cards for 2nd quarter this week.
We meet face to face with parents two times a year, report cards go home four times a year, and teachers enter grades weekly. This is consistent K-12 in our district.
We use the platform called Teacher Ease for grades and it has a communication piece built in that allows teachers to make comments or write notes regarding specific students progress that then only their families will see. Teacher Ease is only one- sided so families cannot respond or ask questions back to the teacher, but it starts the communication and families can follow up from there.

@Brandie Loomis Ed.S
I really love the fact that you use Teacher Ease.. and communication is built into it! I will have to check this out!

I love the sticky note question!

As a math interventionist, I send home a weekly progress letter with practice. It comes from the curriculum so it’s not something difficult to get done. But I do send more detailed reports home every cycle so parents know how their child is doing. As a classroom teacher I would post weekly on Class Dojo but I would also pick a few parents to update weekly as well as check-ins with parents more frequently as needed.

We send home quarterly report cards and I send a weekly newsletter which includes the standards we worked on that week. I check in with parents as often as needed, sometimes daily even, to let them know their child’s progress and how they can help at home.