Ep 32: Planning an Open House was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the latest audio-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors. Sonix is the best audio automated transcription service in 2020. Our automated transcription algorithms works with many of the popular audio file formats.
Hey, teachers, if you have a classroom and a commute, you're in the right place. I'm your host, Rachael, and I want to ride along with you each week on your ride into school. This podcast is the place for busy teachers who want actionable tips, simple strategies, and just want to enjoy their job more. Let's go.
Hey, hey, welcome back to another episode of The Classroom Commute Podcast, I am Rachael your host, if you're joining us for the first time, welcome to this podcast. I hope you find it to be a wonderful inspiration for you as you ride into school or wherever you may be. Listening to this podcast today, we are diving into all things open house. Now, I hesitated to record this episode because everybody around the country or wherever you're listening to this, is in a different situation as it relates to whether or not you're totally virtual or totally in person or a combination of both. But I couldn't start the school year without talking about open house at all, because open house is your time to shine with your students parents and whether or not you are inviting them physically into your classroom or you are getting creative in finding some ways to invite them in virtually to your classroom. It's the time where you can be the hostess with the mostess. I want to help you plan for either a back to school open house that invites your students and families into your own classroom physically. I'm going to give you some helpful tips about how you can potentially do this virtually, if that is your only option. Now, full disclaimer here, I have never done a virtual open house simply because I haven't had to. I am going to turn to some other teachers who are in the trenches with you doing virtual things like open house and starting out the school year online to help give you some helpful tips and reminders. I will give you some references and resources that I will link to in the show notes over at classroomnook.com/podcast/32. I know that many of you are going to be doing some sort of in-person teaching at the start of the school year so I am hoping that you will be able to find this episode valuable. If you are virtual, hopefully you can take what I am teaching and sharing and give it your own virtual spin.
Let's dive right in! Planning for a successful and memorable open house does not have to be difficult. I'm going to give you some fun ideas that will make your students in your families feel right at home, excited to be a part of your classroom. So let's start with some logistics.
Tip one, create a checklist. Here I go again with the checklist but who doesn't love a good checklist? It's easy to forget those small details, like making copies of important papers that need to go home on open house night or putting out volunteer sign up sheets. A simple checklist will make sure that you dot all your I's and cross all your T's. Now, if you're preparing for a virtual open house or meet the teacher night or whatever it is that your school calls it, your checklist is going to look a little differently. Instead of printing out things that you're going to need to hand out to your families as they come to your open house or meet the teacher night, your checklist might remind you to upload certain forms or create certain forms on Google forms or whatever digital platform you might be using. It might include creating a slideshow of information that you're going to then email to your parents and families with information about your classroom. Just keep that in mind as you are preparing. If it's virtual, it's going to look a little different but you can still prepare a checklist to help kind of keep you focused and organized in your preparation.
My second tip to you is to formally invite your families to your event, whether it's going to be an in-person event or a virtual event. You can just prepare some simple invitations, email them or even snail mail them out to your families. I'd like to recommend about two weeks before the event so that families have time to prepare and clear their schedule if they need to. Now, if you're hosting a virtual event and you're using a platform like Zoom or Google Meet, you might find it to be overwhelming to have all the families show up at the same time. Perhaps you break up your open house or meet the teacher night into smaller sessions. You can use an online tool like Sign Up Genius, I'll link to it in the show notes. It's a free online tool that lets parents or families click a specific time that they want to sign up so you can offer them several suggestions. Maybe you have sessions in half hour increments or 15 minute increments depending on what you need to cover or you want to go over in the open house time frame itself and just have families then sign up for a specific session. This will allow a little flexibility for your families and it will help you to then manage the time that you're with them a little bit better. When you're doing this in person, it's easy because families are likely filtering in and filtering out so it's a lot easier to manage. If they're coming all at the same time online in a virtual event, it can get a little overwhelming and some families may kind of fall through the cracks and not get that attention that they need. So consider using something like Sign Up Genius to help manage smaller sessions in your open house or meet the teacher.
My third tip to you is if you are hosting an in-person event to consider your room layout. This year specifically, we have to be really careful about social distancing and making sure that we are keeping our distance from other people. Think about how you can spread your open house out throughout your room so that nobody is congregated or too congested in one specific area. One way you can do this and to help spread your families out is to create some classroom signs that you will then spread throughout the classroom. These signs will indicate where families need to pick up different forms or perhaps sign up and volunteer for different events or anything else that you may be handing out to families instead of putting them all in one place on one table, spread them out throughout your classroom, put up signs so that they know what they're supposed to be doing, what they're supposed to be grabbing, what they're supposed to be signing up for. That will help to then disperse your families around your room instead of all in one spot. And again, if you're hosting a virtual event, you likely don't need classroom signs, but you will need to think about where you are going to put those forms and information sheets and parent handbooks and things like that that you are going to be handing out to families. Have a specific spot where they can go to online, whether that is your Google Classroom online platform or your Microsoft teams, however you're communicating with families, make sure that you have a spot where they can go to get all of the information that you would typically hand out at open house or meet the teacher, but then they can get him online instead.
My fourth tip is for you to create a family or parent handbook. In this handbook, you have compiled all the information that you'd like to share with your families about your classroom management systems, your homework policies, your daily schedule, anything that families would want to know up front before the school year really gets underway you're going to want to include in this handbook. Then you can give it out at your open house. If you're doing this virtually, have a digital version or even just send families a PDF of your handbook so that they can reference it as needed. You can also include your contact information in here as well if families need to get in touch with you.
My fifth tip is to prepare an open house or meet the teacher slideshow. As your families are entering your room, you can greet them with the slideshow that displays some helpful information about the night so that you don't have to repeat yourself over and over as families are coming into your room. On your slide show, you could include information as to where they should go first, what activities they should complete, and anything else that you might find helpful to give information about. As parents and families are entering the room, you can easily create this in a software like PowerPoint or even Google Slides and then just put that PowerPoint or Google Slides presentation on auto loop so that it just continues to play over and over as families are coming in. Again, you won't have to repeat yourself and families will have some direction as soon as they arrive. Now, if you are again doing a virtual meet the teacher or open house night, you can put together a slideshow as well with some helpful information that you can then email to your families or put it up on your learning platform like Google Classroom or whatever your school uses.
All right, now let's talk about some fun things that you can do in your classroom. The things that I just mentioned are some more logistical things that you need to think about as you're preparing for your open house or meet the teacher but you can also include some really fun activities during your meet the teacher or open house night to really help build some classroom community and just help families feel welcome in your classroom. One of the ways that I love to do this is through a classroom scavenger hunt. The typical way that you'd have families come into your classroom and get to know your classroom is maybe you have your your students walk their families around, show them their animal report that they've been working on, show them their desk, maybe walk them to their classroom library, things like that, but instead perhaps send them on a fun little scavenger hunt to help your families explore your classroom a little bit. It could be something super simple as creating a scavenger hunt sheet that they have to go to each section and check it off, or maybe you give them a clue that they have to figure out to then find that specific place in your classroom. Or you could even extend it outside of your classroom and have parents and families go to their specials rooms, their music and gym and things like that. It's just a fun way to get families up and moving. Now for my virtual open house teachers, here's a tip for you. If you're unable to meet in person, you can give your families and students a tour of your online platform that your students will be using. If you're using Google classroom or Seesaw or Microsoft teams, just give a high level view of what that looks like. Share your screen if you're on Zoom or Google Meet and give your families a brief overview of how the platform works, how you're going to communicate with parents and students through the platform. This doesn't need to be an exhaustive tour, but just enough to give your families a high level understanding.
The next tip is another fun activity that you might include in your open house or meet the teacher night and that is a family photo booth. Now, of course, if you're doing this this year, in the year that we are experiencing the pandemic, it may not be completely possible but it's an idea that I want to throw out to you in case you want to tuck it away for another year. This will involve families using the same materials at your photo booth if you're including some fun props and things like that for students and families to use in their pictures. So this may not be a possibility for this year, but tuck it away for possibly next year. A family photo booth is really simple to create. All you really need is to create a fun backdrop. You can use something like a big sheet of butcher paper up on the wall or fabric or another fun material, and then just have family stand in front of it and take pictures. They can use fun props such as funny hats, scarves, and costumes if you have them or if you want them to be able to dress up and be silly. Then they can take a picture either with their own smartphones or perhaps you can borrow a school owned camera or iPad for families to use. You'll have these fun pictures of your families that you can post either in your classroom or you can post them up on your classroom or social media channels to create, again, that classroom community right from the start. Of course, I would suggest making a permission to use photo slips for families to complete, to give you permission to use those photos in and around your classroom or on social media. If you're unable to meet in person, you can still have a little fun with some family photos by having your families send in a photo or two that you can then print out or again, put up on your social media channels for your families to see. You can even perhaps choose to highlight one or more families each week on your social media channels or your classroom website to help build that sense of classroom community.
All right, so I know that planning for open house, whether it's in-person or virtual, is just one more thing on your to do list, right? Well, I've got a little help for you if you need some ready to go resources for planning for your open house or meet the teacher night. I have a open house/meet the teacher, teacher survival kit that I will link to in the show notes that has a lot of the things that I mentioned in today's episode, like checklists, printable activities, and forms that you may provide for your families. There are some digital options as well. Make sure you go and check out that resource. Again, I will link to it in the show notes.
Well, there you have it. Your tips for having a successful back to school open house or meet the teacher night no matter what it might look like this year. Everybody is in this crazy time together so hopefully you grabbed a tip or two that you can use with your classroom, virtual or in person. Hope you have a great rest of your week and I will see you again next week. Bye for now.
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