As a teacher, one of your duties is communicating with your students’ parents or caregivers. Depending on the grade level and needs of the student, it might not be necessary to communicate with parents every day (and let’s be honest, parents have a lot going on themselves as well). Still, many do appreciate daily communication from their teachers. If you work in special education, this might also consist of noting daily moods/behaviors, bowel movements, what they ate, and so on. As you can imagine, filling out all of this information each day can be time-consuming and take up a lot of your precious time – time that could be spent instructing students. This is an especially daunting task if you do not have support staff.
I’m going to show you how to save time while working on life skills with your students with a FREE download below you can use – the end-of-day notebook. This is a worksheet that you and your students will complete during your end-of-day routine reflecting what the date is, what they learned, what services they had, what they had for lunch, and how they felt their day went. If there is anything additional that I need to communicate to parents, I can write it in the notes section of the worksheet, or if it is something more personal – I will then email or call the parents if it is urgent.
Benefits
Students have the opportunity to recall what they did during the day (even if they need help recalling what that info is). Students can take this worksheet home and then use it to help them have a conversation with their parents about what they did. If your student is non-speaking, they can use the visuals as an AAC support. I’ve had many parents tell me they really enjoy this, rather than receiving an email or call from me. Their child gets to work on communication skills, and it is a great bonding activity.
Lower Level Supports
To provide support for students who might have a hard time recalling what they did, I will display this worksheet on the smart board. I will then call on students to help me fill out parts of the worksheet (using the Kami Extension App). Students can then copy the information onto their worksheets. Another support I offer students is circling or writing words in highlighter for students to trace.
Higher Level Ideas
The free download comes with differentiated worksheets, one of which students can write sentences about their day. Is this worksheet too easy for your students? Take it to the next level and have your students write an email to their parents answering the same questions.
Save Paper
Instead of printing a new worksheet for each day, you can save paper by slipping this worksheet into a dry-erase pocket and use a dry-erase marker. Check out dry-erase pockets here (affiliate). Communicate to the parents that this is to come back to school the next day so that it can be cleaned and filled out the following day and so on. Another printer friendly option is to laminate the worksheet, fill out with erase and stick it into a folder.
Download the Freebie
Thanks for reading!
