Use back-to-school night to get parents set up and to provide an outline of how you'll use this app during the year. Take pictures of kids making presentations, showing their work, or otherwise participating in class, then send a quick image to parents with an update. Make announcements to all students and parents about upcoming assessments or class events. Send out important info or documents (like a field trip permission slip) to entire classes of students and their parents.
Continue readingClassDojo Messenger lets teachers communicate instantly with students and their parents. Teachers set up classes, add their students' names, and then add the email addresses for students' parents. Parents receive an email invite to create a free account on the ClassDojo website that will allow them to connect with the teacher. After this one-time setup process, teachers, students, and parents can easily log into their accounts to send and receive messages. Teachers can choose to send class-wide message blasts with text or images to parents and/or students, or they can send messages to individual students or parents.
Used strategically, this could be a great tool for warm, speedy communication with students and parents, but the same pitfalls that plague email and text messages apply here, so teachers should be mindful of their language and tone as they dash off quick updates to students and parents. Setting expectations early and often will be critical for any teacher who uses this app to communicate.
ClassDojo Messenger might be especially effective for classes already using the ClassDojo learning management system. Getting parents and kids set up on the system for the first time can be a little tedious, and messages are only accessible via a ClassDojo login. If kids and parents aren't already used to logging into that system, this may not be any more convenient or reliable than email communication: Kids who tend not to check their email or texts might also miss messages from this messaging source.