Bright Ideas for Back-to-School Night…and Beyond

For Teachers: Planning Your Back-to-School Night

Tips to make your back-to-school night a success

Set the tone for your entire year with the parents of your new students — and open the door to trust and cooperation. Teacher's Network presents tips on how to prepare, what to put on the desks, and what a good presentation looks like.

Back-to-school night is for dads, too

Children do better in school when their fathers are involved. Here are some back-to-school tips for dads written by fathers themselves. And Scholastic offers a wealth of practical ideas for ensuring that your classroom and school are father-friendly.

What your child will learn

Create a one-page summary of what your students will learn this year in class, so parents have an overall picture of the school year and how everything fits into the standards. Remind parents to read and learn with their children every day to build literacy and background knowledge skills!

Meet our class

Represent the diversity of your school's ELL population and create a memorable back-to-school night display.

Back-to-school welcome flyer

Download this ready-to-print welcome note from Reading Rockets. Each child can fill in their favorite book titles and things they like to read about. Perfect for desktops or bulletin boards to welcome families to the classroom.

Name tags

In preparation for back-to-school night, have students design original name tags for their parents, or use the artwork of children's author Jan Brett.

For Teachers: Beyond Back-to-School Night

Parents in the picture

Build partnerships with your students' parents that last beyond back-to-school night. The National PTA has a program called MORE: Men Organized to Raise Engagement, dedicated to strengthening the relationship betwen kids and the important men in their lives. A critical part of this program is connecting fathers with schools.

Building parent-teacher relationships

Learn the essentials of effective communication to strengthen the school-family partnership.

Reaching out to parents of ELLs

Some Hispanic parents feel apprehensive about getting involved because of limited English skills, lack of familiarity with mainstream culture and the public school system in the U.S, and other reasons. Discover ways to reach out to your bilingual families.

Bilingual family night

Read about classroom-tested ideas on how to host a successful family night for bilingual families.

Getting bilingual parents involved

Meet Angelica Torres who was apprehensive at first about volunteering at her child's school. She loved it and now encourages other parents to get involved. Watch the video.

Home-school collaboration for students with ADHD

For students with ADHD, it is essential to have effective parent-teacher communication, collaboration, and consistency on goals and rewards, as well as collaborative planning and monitoring of interventions.

Make your own classroom web page!

With this easy-to-use home page builder from Scholastic, teachers can keep parents up-to-date on classroom activities all year long.

Weekly classroom newsletter template

Parents love to know what's going on in their child's classroom, and a weekly newsletter is a great way to keep the communication going. Reading Rockets offers a ready-to-use, editable newsletter template complete with extra graphics and more than 50 reading tips.

Celebrate reading all year long

NEA's Read Across America's 2009 resource calendar — with art by well known children's illustrators — shines its light on fun books and book events.

Local literacy events and resources

• Subscribe to the public library newsletter for story time hours and special children's programming such as Dia de los ninos
• The Center for the Book at the Library of Congress publishes a calendar of book fairs, storytelling festivals, and other literary events.
• Subscribe to publisher author alerts. AuthorTracker, a nifty service from HarperCollins, will notify you whenever your favorite authors come out with new books, go on tour, and more
• Plan an author visit for your school. Many authors welcome invitations — check out their websites to learn more.

Great e-newsletters for teachers

Everyone is so busy that it's hard to keep up with all the good information out there for teachers. Here's the short list of must-read newsletters:

• Choice Literacy
• GreatSchools
• Reading Rockets News

Online Resources for Parents

Back-to-school night basics

Make the most of back-to-school night. It's a valuable opportunity to learn important information about your child's classroom experience. (Also in Spanish)

Help your child make a smooth re-entry to school

Browse these tips on topics ranging from what to expect on the first day of school, to dealing with back-to-school anxiety, and adjusting to a new teacher

Back-to-school transitions

Getting a new school year off to a good start can influence children's attitude, confidence, and performance both socially and academically. Here are ideas for parents to help smooth the transition from August to September from the National Association of School Psychologists.

Connect with your school counselor

As a parent, you know your child best. However, the school counselor can help you better understand your child as a student. Learn how you can collaborate effectively with the school counselor to ensure your child's academic and social success.

10 ways for parents to help teachers

Tip #1: Find time to share your experiences with school and how that has shaped your perception about parent teacher relationships. Talk about how you think schools differ from when or where you attended. Read all 10 tips.

Tips for a positive partnership

The U.S. Education Department provides these tips for parents about how to be involved in your child's school, and what to do if problems arise.

If your child has learning difficulties

There's so much to cover at back-to-school night beyond the classroom basics. Some parents may want to spend more time on these topics:

• Understanding the Special Education Process
• Response to Intervention Process

The best way to support your LD child is to develop a strong relationship with the teachers, administrators, and other staff who educate your child.

It takes a while for teachers to get to know their students. Parents, especially parents of special needs students, can help the process along by designing a dossier and discuss it at the first parent-teacher conference.

Sound It Out blog

Subscribe to this lively weekly blog from Joanne Meier, the Reading Rockets reading expert — and the mom of two elementary school kids.

Resources to Print and Share with Parents

Back-to-school booklists

• Bank Street Library
• Read Write Think
• Reading Is Fundamental
• Scholastic
• School Library Journal

Who's who at your child's school

Customize this glossary of personnel for your own school and distribute to parents at back-to-school night.

The school library

Did you know that the size of a school library's staff and collection is one of the best school predictors of academic achievement? Offer parents information about how to access and support your school library.

100 ways to help your child and school succeed

There are many ways to be involved with your child's education. Here are 100 ideas from the National PTA, in English (420K PDF)* and Spanish (416K PDF)*.

Reading with your child: parent tip sheets

For parents of kids in preschool through grade 3, these reading tip sheets are available in 11 languages.

Ed Extras

Subscribe to these free one-page articles for parents, in English and Spanish, on topics ranging from building background knowledge to helping your kids succeed in school.

Do you have a reading rocket at home?

Download and print this colorful bilingual door hanger.

Lunchbox notes

Small notes tucked inside a lunchbox or bookbag can really bring a smile to your child's face. In addition to reinforcing reading skills, you're also modeling the power of writing. Download these ready-to-print note papers.