How CreativeCurriculum.net Helps Teachers Form Partnerships With Parents

The beginning of the school year brings new children, new families, new teachers, and new opportunities for working together. Now is the time to build strong foundations for positive relationships with families throughout the year. CreativeCurriculum.net, our online assessment, planning, and reporting system can help.

When people think of CreativeCurriculum.net, they typically think about the extensive information they can collect, analyze, and report. They don't always remember that the system includes many features to help extend the personal relationships they form with parents. Nothing can ever replace face-to-face contact or telephone conversations, but CreativeCurriculum.net can enhance them.

CreativeCurriculum.net includes functionality that teachers use to communicate with parents online and off. Here are a few of the parent-related tools:

• The Child Progress and Planning Report is an automatically generated, detailed narrative progress report based on the assessment information teachers have already entered. The narrative is easily edited and personalized. This report is provided to the parents for conferences and/or interim reports.
• The Developmental Area Report is another automatically generated report showing parents which developmental steps their children are currently working on and what parents can expect next. This report also suggests family at-home activities appropriate for the child's developmental level.
• Family Invitations and The Family Journal allow teachers to invite parents to go to the Parents' site and share notes and observations electronically.
• The parents' side of CreativeCurriculum.net includes interactive features that help parents understand their child's development.

Here's how the Family Invitations and Parents' site work:

Once teachers and administrators have entered information about children into the system, they can share CreativeCurriculum.net with their parents as another component of their curriculum. To get started:

• Teachers collect e-mail addresses from the parents, and invite them by e-mail to register on the system.
• Parents click on the link in the e-mail invitation to go to the site and register for a private password and username that links them to information about their child.
  

Once registered, parents can use all of the features on the site. They can:

• participate in a simple interview-style assessment of their child,
• see activity suggestions based on their child's level of development,
• view hundreds of helpful articles about preschool and child development, and
• see and respond to journal entries from the child's teacher.

The Family Journal is one of the most interactive, helpful, and engaging functions on the site. Teachers enter personalized journal entries (observations, notes, or simple reports) about the children's activities at school. Once the journal entry is completed, an e-mail is sent to the parents announcing a new Family Journal Entry to read. Parents click on the link in the e-mail, log on to the site, and read entries about their child (and only their child.)

Journal entries can:

• include samples of children's work, photos, video or audio files, or other documents that expand the journal entry.
• be written about groups of children and posted to each child's parents with one click. The system can even be used to send announcements to the entire class.
• be coded to show The Creative Curriculum objective to which it applies.

Parents can respond to the journal entries by e-mail, or enter journal entries of their own, complete with photos and supporting documents just like the teacher's version. A complete history of the communication between the teacher and the parents is available to the teacher and the parents. This history can be very helpful for parent conferences.

It's easy to see how a few clicks and a bit of typing can not only save time, but can also nurture budding relationships with parents. While family communication is not the primary function of CreativeCurriculum.net, it is certainly a powerful feature that can help teachers and administrators maintain positive teacher-parent communication.

More functionality for parents will be added to CreativeCurriculum.net in the coming months. Stay tuned.

Register now to try a FREE 30-day trial on CreativeCurriculum.net. Or contact us for more information.