11 Easy Ways to Automate Parent Communications with ClassTag

Do you find that managing parent communications, organizing and scheduling take up too much of your precious teaching time? Here’s how to put essential communications and classroom management on autopilot with ClassTag.

1. Organizing Parent-Teacher Conferences

Before:

Traditionally, scheduling parent-teacher conferences would involve printing forms, phone calls and endless follow-ups.

With ClassTag:

With ClassTag, you can schedule your next conference in under 5 minutes! In a few simple steps, you’ll choose a date, create timeslots, announce the conference and send a notification to all the parents. You can also assign slots to parents who don’t have easy internet access or edit slots as needed, even after the announcement has been sent.

2. Sending Parent Newsletters

Before:

As most teachers, you know that keeping parents in the loop is important and can improve learning outcomes. But composing lengthy messages every week is time-consuming. Sending paper notes is wasteful and you never know who’s read the message.

With ClassTag:

Teachers who use the automated Weekly Update save hours every week, as we handle keeping parents informed for you. Parents will get an at-a-glance overview of upcoming activities every week at a time chosen by you. You can customize the email and add a message, or just “set it and forget it”!

3. Finding Field Trip Chaperones

Before:

Field trips are an exciting change of pace from the usual classroom reality, but controlling a lively group of young explorers is nearly impossible without the support of parent chaperones. But getting parents to volunteer and dedicate their entire day is hard! It would usually involve a lot of negotiation and back and forth, and things would often feel last-minute and disorganized.

With ClassTag:

Use a Volunteer Request to let parents know about a field trip well in advance. You can add a date, time, location and attach files with more details. Giving all details to parents in one place makes them more likely to participate. Once they sign-up, everyone knows that the spot is filled. (Similarly, you can use this functionality to request classroom helpers or mystery readers.)

4. Requesting Donations

Before:

You have so many ideas for augmenting learning with creative projects and practical exercises. Your students simply love these activities and the results are stunning. The problem is, you keep spending your own money on making your Pinterest dreams come true in the classroom.

With ClassTag:

ClassTag makes it easy to openly ask parents for the items you need with a “Request Items” function. Posting your request well in advance and letting parents know how these items will help kids learn is your best bet. You are more likely to collect everything you need, and give parents more insight into the learning process at the same time.

5. Sharing Photos

Before:

Families love sharing pictures from school events but without a clear system in place, collecting photos from everyone and working out how to store them and distribute them would always end up becoming your responsibility.

With ClassTag:

ClassTag’s easy-to-manage gallery automates photo-sharing, offering an easy system that allows everyone to contribute and keeps pictures secure.

6. Updating Contact Information

Before:

Parents changing phone numbers often or not being able to reach some parents was a major concern.

With ClassTag:

With our Class Directory, parents can update their details themselves and you have an easy system to collect details of both parents (and other caretakers if needed). Adding kids and parents’ profile pictures makes the experience more personal and encourages parents to get to know each other.

7. Keeping a Parent Involvement Log

Before:

Another thing to print out and keep track of! The form would often be out of date and you didn’t feel it provided valuable insight beyond being just another piece of paperwork.

Parent Involvement Log used to be just another chore. In contrast, ClassTag stats provide actual insights you can use to improve involvement and establish deeper relationships with parents.

With ClassTag:

The Stats page provides a real-time overview of parents’ level of engagement and allows you to take action easily. In fact, ClassTag itself is a log of your efforts and interactions in the parent involvement department, so you can look back and evaluate your efforts at any time without additional forms and paperwork.

8. Organizing a Class Party

Before:

Knowing that this is a special day for your students, you want everything to go smoothly. There’s so much to keep track of: getting some classroom helpers, organizing food and decorations… Your inbox is buzzing with emails and you’re still not sure who’s bringing what!

With ClassTag: 

Request volunteers, list all the items you need and wait for parents to respond and sign up!

9. Urgent Notifications

Before:

If plans change at school (harsh weather, early dismissal), you scrambled to find parents’ contact details. You had to send emails, call parents individually and you were never sure they were able to pick up the message at the short notice.

With ClassTag:

With some patience and persuasion, you can get all the parents connected, and with most of them receiving push notifications on their phone, you can be reassured that they can stay informed on the go. You also get a real-time insight into who saw the message and who needs a follow-up or a phone call.

10. Sharing Learning Materials with Parents

Before:

Parents deeply care about their child’s education, but… Many of them are too time-poor to log in to many different tools or actively engage with frequent emails in order to actively engage with what their child is learning.

With ClassTag:

ClassTag is a familiar destination that parents already use to sign up for conferences and volunteer. You can easily get them even more involved in child’s learning by sharing current learning materials and instructing them how to enhance learning with activities at home.

11. Improve Participation in Class Events

Before:

Not knowing what kind of turnout you can expect made planning difficult. More often then not, multiple follow-ups were needed to find out who’s going to to turn up.

With ClassTag: 

Scheduling your event and notifying the parents takes just a couple of minutes, and ClassTag will handle RSVPs and send reminders for you. Parents get an easy way to confirm participation with a one click and don’t miss opportunities to get involved in the classroom.

Yes, you can use many other tools to automate the tasks above: photo gallery apps, calendars, reminder apps. The advantage of ClassTag is having one, central destination where you can share information with parents and communicate everything that’s related to their child’s education. Once you have a trusted system taking care of these tasks for you, you’ve created a stable foundation to establish deeper, personal relationships with your students’ families.