Freebie: Digital Parent Newsletter

Freebie: Digital Parent Newsletter

Let's talk about newsletters.  They take time.  They take copies.  Oh, dear, the copies!  Back in my school in Florida, we had a maximum of 500 copies per month.  Sounds like a lot, until you consider math homework for 25 kids Monday through Thursday (we had no text book), a required reading log, and other random copies. That's 20 copies per kid per month, less than 1 per day. Front to back copies were counted as two copies!  Thank goodness I had a parent benefactor who helped out.  He owned a company and would make copies of the homework for my class each week.  I loved making a newsletter because it was an easy way to inform parents of tests and trips, and to celebrate the kids with weekly Kudos.  I wasn't a copy hoarder, mind you.  My kids did lots of creative projects in class.  But sometimes, I just needed a sheet in front of them in a hurry.

A couple of times each year, I would ask the parents to write something like "I saw it" in their child's agenda book just to see how many parents were receiving the newsletter.  Though it was never more than half, I know that half was very thankful.  I also know that these were the parents who were going to ask for this information anyway.

And those were the days before the interwebs ☺, and sites like Dropbox and Google Drive, and all of the other fun ways we inform parents digitally.

I want to share with you an easy way to share a digital newsletter (NO COPIES!) with parents and guardians.  I have created an editable template in Google Slides for you.  It's very simple, not elaborate.  All you have to do is edit the template weekly, and then share it with your room parents and guardians.  They do not need a Google account, nor will they be able to edit the newsletter.

1.  First, open my newsletter.  When you click, it will ask you make a copy for yourself. Click Make a Copy.

Freebie Digital Parent Newsletter

2.  Edit the newsletter for your own class.  Change the background, the fonts.  Add, delete classes and subjects.

3.  When you're ready to share with parents, click on the web address up above (the url).  See how it says edit in the address? It's toward the end of the url.  Highlight the word "edit" and change it to "present".  (You don't need the quotation marks.)

4.  Copy the address (with the word "present" inside) and paste it in the email that you will use to send it to parents.  Before you send it to parents, feel free to click on it to check and see if it really works. It will. ☺I just did.

It's never too late to start a new way to communicate with parents and guardians.