What if I told you there was one quick and easy thing you could implement that would have a WORLD of impact on your relationships with families and on student behavior? Are you ready for the big secret? It’s positive notes home. Now, hear me out. You may be thinking, how can that really have that big of an impact? I am here to teach you why positive communication matters and how to implement a weekly system easily. Don’t miss out on the must-have freebie, too!
Have you ever heard the phrase, “Your first communication home should be a positive one?” If you haven’t I’m here to tell you exactly how important that is with a story from my first year of teaching. During my first year of teaching, I did not know how important it was to establish positive communication with families first. I called a parent about a child having trouble and making poor choices in the bathroom. Since this was my first call home, this mom did not know who I was or how my relationship was with her child.
All she knew was that I was calling about her daughter and the negative things that happened. She started yelling at me and telling me how her daughter could never do anything like that and what I was doing to watch the bathroom. After helping her calm down and explaining the situation, she accepted her behavior and said she would speak with her. This did fix the problem, but boy, was I overwhelmed with that interaction. In hindsight, I should have reached out first with the positive so that we could have built a relationship and foundation before bombarding her with bad news.
Send Positive Notes Home with Brag Notes
Fast forward to a decade in education, I know exactly how important it is to foster family and student relationships from the moment they enter the door. One of the easiest ways I have found to start off on the right foot with families is by sending home brag notes! I love using these because they are easy, take little to no time, and have a HUGE impact on family relationships and student behavior.
Starting from week one, I choose 5 students to send these positive notes home each week. They are color or black and white to make printing easy. I like to pre-make a TON to have on hand for the whole year. I also like to print on Astrobrights to add a nice pop of color. Each week I am looking for positive behavior from 5 specific students. As soon as I see it, I quickly fill out the note (it takes less than a minute) and I put it on their desk. As I do this, I check off their name to know that I positively communicated home.
Editable Positive Behavior Notes
This system takes less than one minute per child but makes a huge impact on them and their families. They look forward to seeing who gets the positive note home and their faces light up when they see they’ve gotten one. This creates a positive culture in the classroom and lets them know why they are valued. It also incentivizes other students who want a note, too. This can be as simple as a student who helps another student clean up, a nice note from a specials teacher, someone who helps you, or even someone who tried really hard on an assessment and didn’t give up. Once you start searching for the positive, you’ll begin to see more positive throughout your entire day and classroom. If you’ve ever heard give 5 positives to every 1 negative behavior, this is your gold.
When you do this with your students, you’ll be happier each day, as will your classroom. It’s the same as taking time to be grateful each day. It really does change your entire classroom community, and student behavior, with just a simple little positive note home. Additionally, the next time you have to call home about a negative behavior, parents will be more receptive to hearing it. This is because you’ve already communicated SO much positively with them. To take it one step further, make a call to a parent when you’ve sent a note home for the day. One shocked parent after the next couldn’t believe I was calling with GOOD news. Talk about transformative!
So are you ready to implement this easy system that makes a WORLD of difference for families and students? I promise you won’t regret it! Don’t forget about that must-have freebie too. Don’t forget to subscribe and grab your freebie!
Want more easy and fun ideas to build your community and establish relationships with families? Check out some more easy favorites below!
10 Classroom Community Must Haves
How to Build Classroom Community from Day One
I really hope you enjoyed learning about the power of positive notes home to strengthen student behavior! Don’t forget to subscribe to my email list! Not only will you get the most up to date tips, tricks, and classroom projects… and of course more fun FREEBIES including the Movement Code FREEBIE! You will also have exclusive access to tons of digital how to videos! If you would like to learn about this and other things happening in my classroom follow me @sweetnsauerfirsties on Instagram.
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