Skip to main content

6 Easy Steps to Awesome Newsletters that Meet CCSS AND Get StudentsInvolved


At this point I believe most classroom teachers, Title I teams, Special Education Teams, etc. have all finally got on board and send home either a weekly newsletter as individuals or as a team.  We know the forms this can take such as email, website, blog, or paper. We know the benefits of such

communication, like more parent participation, less phone calls, and an overall understanding of the roles your class or team or room is fulfilling in the school building as a whole.  I'd like you to consider how you create the newsletter though...is it at 9pm on Sunday night? Is it about last week? The upcoming week? A mixture of both? Here is how I do it, and how I hope you will try to implement newsletters into your school day/writing/ELA block at any age level K-6:

1. Monday- Thursday: experience learning standards that are focused and meaningful, with students as active participants in the lessons through movement, conversation, modeling, manipulative a, and/ or play.  (So, in other words, have at fabulously run and effective classroom that is just delightful!!! Haha:) 

2. When Thursday rolls around, use your projector ( hopefully you have one for the SmartBoard or some other technology in your room!) to display a blank word document or choose a newsletter template together and explain to the class briefly that you'll be creating the newsletter together, everyone gets a sentence, everyone helps!

3. Call on each student one at a time to give you a complete sentence from the week that they learned or enjoyed, or something coming up soon that they are looking forward to.  Type each and every idea, even if they repeat.  EVERYONE contributes in an important way.  Older kiddos can type their sentence into the document themselves, or you can do them all.  

4. Read through your sentences together, model how to cut and paste or otherwise edit the document so it flows into paragraphs that make sense together, or fits into a format that is visually easy to comprehend.  

5. Allow students to give input about font, text size, what to call the newsletter, and/or adding any pictures that are relevant to the content they've created.  

6. Publish, upload, or print your newsletter on Friday Morning.  During this ELA block, allow students to use a highlighter to fin the sentence they contributed to the newsletter, highlight it so it stands out, and then have them buddy read it to each other.  This is a chance for one last revision, then sent it home or out to the web!

I've done this type of newsletter at every grade level, K-6 and it is always fun and meaningful.  The students love being able to talk about what they've learned this week and of course it gives us another form of assessment (oral, formative, authentic) to see what we as teachers hit home runs on that week or might need to revisit because it didn't make a big enough impression to make it into the newsletter!

Have you used this or something similar? Might you try this? What are your thoughts? I'd love to hear from you! 

Until next time, 
Stefanie ~~

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

5 Steps to Help You Set Up Small Group Differentiated Instruction that will Grow Readers!

This week, I want to give you some practical ways to differentiate your literacy instruction using technology during your Guided Reading time. The reading station structure I use is largely based on the Daily 5 instructional method.  I have been going over in my mind how to share this with other people for a long time now, so lets jump in and see where it takes us! My instructional Reading block is roughly 75-90 minutes long, depending on my kiddos needs and the day of the week.  For the purposes of this blog post, lets plan for 75 minutes of uninterrupted time for a "typical" day in my classroom for Reading. 1. Assess and Use Grouping Strategies to Optimize Learning Students take a benchmark assessment at the beginning, middle, and end of the year, with a variety of progress monitoring check ups in between. That is how I determine which student goes into which reading groups. I use a mix of grouping by Lexile range score, overall scaled score, or grade level equivalen...

Updated: Reading to Someone in Centers is Important! Make it Productive for the Students with a Structured Activity they can Facilitate for Themselves!

In Elementary teaching, whether in public schools or charter schools at some point during their instructional day have a Language Arts Block that includes small group instruction.  For us teachers, generally that means pulling leveled groups for guided reading or some form of it (reciprocal teaching, close reading, etc.), and for students it means rotating through learning "centers" or "stations" that should reinforce previously learned concepts based on Common Core Standards.  When deciding how to manage these small group and center times, teachers often seek out instructional practices such as "The Daily 5", which includes the following 5 types of learning centers:                                       1. Working with Words 2.  Reading to Yourself 3.  Writing  4. Reading to Someone 5. Listening to Reading Now, whether you use The Daily 5 practice, or ...