If you try this activity with your students, we’d love to see what you do. Share your journey via the #Inspired2Learn hashtag on your preferred social platform.

Discipline: These activities can be applied in any class or subject area.

Age level: All

Time: 5-15 minutes (or longer if you build out some of the activities more) 

Newsletters home to families are not uncommon in elementary school and when parents find the time to read them they often offer broad brushstrokes of the major things students learned over the course of a week or month. They are most often teacher-generated and not always well-read by their intended audience. These forms of family connection do well to document what transpires in school but they don’t often foster engagement. The activities offered here invite more of a back-and-forth and at their best come from the voices of students more than from that of the teacher.

You’ve Got Mail

Letter writing may feel old-fashioned but it offers a great way to practice retelling and synthesizing information into something succinct that gets a message across. Have students write letters to their families about what they’ve learned in class during the day. Consider inviting families to write back!

Scribe’s Record

Determined to change her students’ response of “nothing much” when parents asked what they did that day, Inspired Teaching Founder Aleta Margolis came up with Scribe’s Record.

By capturing what your students most want to remember learning, you can accomplish a number of goals that support an Inspired Learning Environment. You’ll strengthen students’ skills of analysis and synthesis. You’ll build productive habits of mind so that students think, each day, “What are the critical ideas or activities I want to remember from today’s class?” – as opposed to thinking, “Is this going to be on the test?” And you’ll get consistent feedback, on what students value, enjoy, ponder, and recall about each day’s class activities, as well as what’s interesting and what’s not. Learn more here.

Share Questions with Families

As you close class, consider asking students what questions they want to discuss with their families after all they learned today. You can turn this into something they do on a regular basis and depending on the age even task them with asking the questions and bringing back answers the next day. You might start this process by sharing questions with them to take home, and then building up to them crafting these questions themselves after they see you model the kinds of questions that will yield interesting answers. 

Here are some things to consider in the structure of questions that work well: 

1. Ask open-ended questions, and avoid questions with yes/no answers.
2. Ask about specific events, people, or activities.

This isn’t something you’d do as a closing with your students but it’s something you might want to incorporate into newsletters or messages home. Consider offering parents questions they can ask their children such as:

1. What did you find interesting today? What was interesting about it?
2. What challenged you today? What did you do about that?
3. Tell me about something funny that happened today.
4. Tell me about something you are hoping to learn more about…  what questions do you have about it?
5. Who did you work with during social studies today?
6. What did you play at recess? What were some other kids playing?

Standards Addressed by these Activities