During the 2009-2010 school year I hosted a potluck as part of my classroom’s Back to School Night! I had wanted to do this for years and I was thrilled with how it finally worked out! It was so successful I will always host a Back to School Night potluck from now on.

Reasons for a Back to School Night Potluck

My initial reasons for a Back to School Night potluck were simple. I believe that anytime you have food at an event, more people will attend. Beyond that though, I really did have several important reasons for wanting a Back to School Night Potluck:

Community Building
So often Back to School Night is an event where parents are asked to be a passive and quiet part of an audience. Parents are expected to listen and receive information from their child’s teacher and then asked to leave promptly when the time is up. Usually the teacher (and perhaps the principal) have so much information to share, there is little time for the parents to chat with the teacher or other parents. My goal as a teacher is not only to help students form into a community over a school year, but for parents to build relationships with one another as well. I believe this is another way I can facilitate and support student success. Sharing food and eating together is a great way to begin this relationship building process. Something significant and meaningful seems to happen when people share food together.

Food helps people feel welcome and special. By having a potluck, I allowed as many people as wanted to contribute and feel a part of a special evening. The tone of the evening would have been much different if I had provided all the food and drinks. If I had provided all the food, I think the parents would have felt as passive recipients, rather than as active participants. True community takes active participation and helps instill purpose and pride in members. By asking everyone to pitch in, more parents felt as if they were a significant part of the evening — and they were!  Requesting a small effort on their part really does help people feel more invested in an event like Back to School Night.

Cross-Cultural Sharing
Because I asked for “family favorites” we got a wonderful selection of food from across the globe. The community I work in is extremely diverse with people literally from around the globe. Sharing food is another way of sharing one’s culture. Eating one another’s food and talking with each other is a low-key method to begin the process of building a community of parents. Just as my students work together and support each other, parents who know each other, will call on one another for support, advice, and encouragement.

Relieves Stress
School nights are always busy nights with kids and parents rushing to and from work and other activities and obligations. By having food at Back-to-School night hopefully it was one less thing families had to do that night. Often families are rushed to get to back to school night. If they know there will be dinner at Back to School Night, it may help give them a little relief. If anything, it is just more enjoyable to attend any event when you know there will be some delicious food present.

How did the potluck work out?

The Back to School Night Potluck worked out really well! I actually had the highest turnout ever for Back to School Night. I had 28 out of 32 families attend our classroom potluck and meeting! Some parents only visited for a few minutes, but they came(!) and brought food! Everyone seemed to relax a bit and enjoy the variety of food and drinks!

What would I do differently next time?

When I do this again, I may actually begin the potluck even earlier so people can spend more time hanging out, eating and chatting with one another. I like the intimacy of my classroom, but it would also be fun to eat in a slightly larger room. If there was more space I might actually set up strategically placed name tags to encourage people to mix it up a bit. If I did this, I would also have an activity that each table would need to complete. This would just be some fun, low-key way to get people talking with another while they eat.

Back to School Night Potluck Letter

Here is a copy of the note I sent home with my students. Below you can download this letter in a variety of formats.

Save the Date!

Room 18’s Back to School Meeting is at 6:00 – 7:00 pm

Come eat dinner together before Back to School Night! Room 18 is planning a special potluck before the regular meeting.  We will use this time to eat, relax and “hang out” together.

When: Wednesday, September 16

Time: 5:30 – 6:00 is Room 18’s Back to School Potluck

(The regular Back to School Meeting is at 6:00 – 7:00pm)

Back to School Night is a very important night. I really look forward to meeting all of you.  Come get answers to all the questions you have about our classroom, how the room works, and all about how you can be involved in our learning adventures this year!  Come early and eat dinner too!

——————————————————————————————————————————-

Please let me if you are coming!

Student Name: ______________________________________

Parent Name: ____________________________ Phone/Email: __________________

___ I will attend Back to School Night Meeting (6:00 – 7:00 pm)

___ Yes, I am also going to come early (5:30-6pm) for Room 18’s potluck.

___ Yes, I can bring a dish (family favorites are encouraged)

dish: _____________________

___ I can bring: (drinks, plates, napkins, etc.) _________________________________

Download my Back to School Night Potluck letter
PDF, Word, Pages ’08 and ’09

Effective Parent Teacher Relationships

Successful parent teacher meetings, parent teacher conferences, and parent teacher interactions of all kinds depend on having an effective relationship with parents. SMART is a step-by-step process that successful teachers use to establish effective parent teacher relationships. Are you interested in learning more about establishing effective parent teacher relationships? Click on the link below to learn more about SMART.

This simple, yet powerful project allows students to share a little bit about themselves at the beginning of the year. At the same time it allows students to jump into some simple audio recording and editing using GarageBand.

This year I had my fourth grade students do this activity the second day of the year. I knew the computer lab would soon be full of classes taking their Fall benchmark assessments so I took the opportunity to do this as a back to school/get to know you activity. I also wanted my students to learn how to make a simple audio recording in Garageband at the beginning of the year because this is a foundation skill they will use all year long in my class.

How can I take time to do this type of project?

I make time for important projects like this for a number of reasons. One powerful way I can use these recordings as a teacher is to use the recording as a beginning of the year baseline for oral language development.  This project is an easy way for me to assess students oral language at the beginning of the year.  If you have English learners in your class like I do, using Garageband, Turn and Talks, and cooperative learning is extremely beneficial to their gaining English language proficiency and fluency.  In the future, I will post some additional GarageBand projects, including an engaging project students can use to practice reading fluency without even realizing it!

The Basics

This is a very straighforward activity.  Using the letters of your first name, students will create a podcast that shares about who they are. For example:

Hi! My name is Matt.
The M stands for mountains because I like hiking and backpacking in the mountains. The A stands for apples because I grew up in the apple capitol of the world. T stands for teacher because I love helping people learn as a teacher. T also stands for Traffic because I hate getting stuck in traffic. That’s all about my right now. Thanks for listening!

Listen to this sample: [Audio clip: view full post to listen]

Here are samples of student created podcasts.

Activity Steps

These are the steps I went through this year with my students:

1. Listen to examples (see below) and have students figure out what is going on.
2. Explain the task. If you are using a rubric, now is the time to share that and go over it with the students.
3. Students write their Name Acrostic.
4. Demo Garageband (or Audacity) and show your students how to do a simple recording (see below). Also show them how to add an musical intro and outro.
5. Give students time to work on their recordings.
6. (Optional) Take a picture of each student so they can make an enhanced podcast using their photo.
7. Put all the podcast files on one computer. Make any final edits.
8. Export and publish the podcasts.

Keynote Presentation

Here is a Keynote presentation I used this year to get the students listening and thinking about this activity. Because this presentation was converted to flash some of the transitions are a bit slower than normal.

Click here to view the embedded video.

How to Use Garageband to Create this Podcast

Watch this video tutorial and learn how to make this podcast using Garageband.  Feel free to have your students watch this video as well.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Helpful Tip

Noise can definitely can be an issue whether you are in a classroom or in a computer lab.  Our school has some Logitech Headsets that we can checkout and use.  They work great and allow students to record themselves without picking up all the other noise from the room.

If you try this project with your students, please let me know in the comment section below.

Effective Parent Teacher Relationships

Successful parent teacher meetings, parent teacher conferences, and parent teacher interactions of all kinds depend on having an effective relationship with parents. SMART is a step-by-step process that successful teachers use to establish effective parent teacher relationships. Are you interested in learning more about establishing effective parent teacher relationships? Click on the link below to learn more about SMART.