Back to School Night

So Back to School Night, or Open House as some schools call it, can be a stressful night for teachers. Here in room 11, we like to keep things fun! It is a time to meet our students’ parents and show them just a little bit of who we are and what we will be doing with their children this year. It is a time to show our creative side and give the parents a sneak peek into their child’s school experience inside our classroom. Here are few things that take the stress out of the night for us. First, it helps to think of a theme for the night. I just happened to find these cute little parent gifts to put on the desks as a thank you and, our theme was born.

Packages of popcorn with this cute card stock label were a great thank you to the parents for “popping in” to our back to school night and a great inspiration for our movie inspired theme.

Continuing with your theme, you can have your students create original art work for their parents to take with them. This way they have something to document the beginning of their child’s school year (handprints and/or photos are great). As a teacher they are easy to do, and as a parent they make great keepsakes to look back on! Display their work in a fun way so that the parents can see their great work, and know that you are just as excited about their projects as they are.

Our big marquee sign with the Title “A Year to Remember” was the perfect way to display our students self written bio’s that we knew their parents would enjoy reading.

We even did a version of the Hollywood Walk of Fame on the floor leading up to our classroom door.

This worked out great! Not only did this display get a lot of attention, we also managed to give parents a photo of their child with their handprints to document their start of second grade!

Don’t forget to do something inside your room too! I try to always have something that will make the parents feel like their children are right there with them! We try to create something fun that the parents will enjoy seeing and or doing. I learned from several teachers (when I started teaching) that it is always fun to have the parents find their child’s desk. You can use clues that the students leave on their desk, you can make paper bodies of the students to help them, or you can do a little of both. We like to give our parents written hints as well as visual. We have our students make foam faces that look like them and then place a face on each of their seats. In addition, the we have the students complete a "Who am I?" page that gives clues to parents in order to help them find their child’s seat in our room. These serve and the duel purpose of covering their name tags so the parents can't peek! :)

With the help of our clues, and the sometimes uncanny resemblance of their foam faces, parents were easily able to find their little ones' seats in the room. All while having some laughs along the way!

Making your presentation fun is another way to relieve some stress. It’s important to remember that Back to School Night is not parent teacher conference night. This is a night to let your students’ parents know a little bit about you, and what to expect of their child this year. 

We use a PowerPoint presentation to help keep us on point, and to ensure that we don’t miss any important information. We add a little music to make it fun, we stop and talk (we make sure to not read the slides, but just talk about them as we go). We also like to feed our parents. Parents are just like kids, they are usually a whole lot nicer when they are not hungry! They love to munch on goodies like the soft pretzel tray that Miss Thomas brings every year, or some good old fashioned home-made cookies. 

This year’s Back to School Night was a success for us. We had a GREAT turnout and enjoyed meeting all of our students’ parents, and even got a few visits from some former students’ and some former parents. I even had a visit from a former student who is now in high school! Wow, that makes me feel old!

We hope that you have a great Back to school night too. Please share any ideas that you do to make this night a fun one!