 Five tips to redefine family communication. We are honored you're spending time here learning more with CESA. I'm Angela and I taught kindergarten for 15 years using CESA in my classroom and I now lead the community time, community time. Oh my goodness, community team full time here at CESA. I lead the community team, I should say. You can find me on Twitter at Mrs. Gadki. I'd love to connect and see how you're putting into practice some of these ideas that we are sharing here today. And we're just gonna hop right into it. We're gonna go through five tips that you can try. And if you are watching the recording, listen for a code that I'm going to say during the session, you will need that six character code to get a certificate if you are viewing this via a recording. So you'll have to listen up to hear that. So we're gonna hop right into tip number one, build family trust and support. And we're gonna do that with ongoing visibility into student learning. I am a firm believer in the fact that families want to be on the journey with you. And when they have that ongoing visibility, they actually can feel more comfortable knowing that you are doing amazing things when you are with their child for the majority of the day. So even starting from day one, these positive relationships based on respect and trust do require ongoing communication. So when we start talking about redefining family communication, you might start thinking first about what practices you have in place right now. And as we go through some of the ideas today, you might start to think, how might you change what you're currently doing or tweak it a little bit to try some of these ideas? I also wanna point out too, CESA does a great job of sharing that process of learning. It doesn't always have to be that end product that maybe families only see once every six weeks or at a family or parent teacher conference. And the other thing is, I think families appreciate, if you don't just say, our partnership is really, really important, but actually show them that it is very important by communicating, by setting up a system where they feel like they're getting ongoing communication from your classroom. So I love this example. And this is from Melody, who is a preschool teacher. This is really her first post. It sets the tone for her year and is very welcoming to families and students of course, really welcoming them as a partner in the journey. So I'm actually going to click on this and play this example so you can hear a little bit of how Melody approached this before students even walked into her classroom this year. Hi, I'm Mrs. Barnes and you found me. I'm so excited to meet you on our sneak peek day this Thursday. Even if you've been in our class, I still want you to come. And here's why. I am going to make a giant family wall in the classroom because your family is the most important part of who we are. When you come, you can get a family photo taken that will be blown to eight and a half by 10 and put on our wall for your child to see anytime they'd like. Also, when you come, you can meet me in person, not just on the screen, and you can take a peek of the classroom. I hope to see you this Thursday. Bye-bye. So I thank Melody for that example. And again, when you get the slides, it might play a little bit smoother for you. But again, can you imagine as a family member getting that message and or your student entering this teacher's classroom how that can really start building that trust from day one. And I also have here some instructions that you could do to try this out. So if you haven't ever posted or even connected families yet, try to make sure there's something waiting inside Seesaw for them. So these are the instructions that you can follow as a teacher if you want to create a post. Some other ideas I've mentioned here, it's maybe in this, you could give a tour of your classroom or maybe read a book. I saw that a lot at the beginning of the school year, lots of teachers reading, you know, the night before first grade or all sorts of different books that they added to Seesaw as well. So just a couple of things to think about. The other thing I want to mention too, is that as a teacher, when you are getting started, it's okay if you maybe take a couple of days and you are posting work. So this is from my kindergarten classroom of a few years ago on the very first day of kindergarten. And I told my families, I said, hey, let's make sure you are connected to Seesaw because on that very first day of school, I'm gonna make sure that you have a peek at what your student is doing. So this was added to this child's portfolio because I knew, ooh, this is gonna be a great conversation starter when that student gets home and they can explain and elaborate. And again, not only am I communicating, but the student is also communicating and sharing their experience learning as well. Tip number two, we want to empower students to drive communication. And I have to say, one of the things that I really believe really sets Seesaw apart is the fact that students can do a lot of the posting to the classroom. So that really redefines the communication, I would say direction, meaning the teacher doesn't have to be the only communicator, right? They're not the only ones that have to tell the story. So student posts are extremely powerful and very motivating for families. So I'm gonna share just a couple of examples. And again, families love hearing from their child. And of course, when students are posting to Seesaw, they get the opportunity to do that. So we're gonna listen to this example. This is from a third grader. This is the circuit I made. And it didn't work at first because we had to switch around this piece right here for the positive and negative energy. And now you can see it works fine. Watch this, I'll switch it on, switch this way for it. And it will take off right now. Okay, so you can imagine the family getting into that. Not only is this something that could come home because obviously these are materials that would never make their way home from the classroom, but they can continue that conversation. The student is really taking ownership not only in the work they did, but again, leading that conversation at home as well. And I also encourage you to think about communicating and it's okay if it's even small moments, right? Sometimes I hear from teachers, well, I don't know, would families wanna see this? Should I add this or not? But even small moments for students again are helping build that relationship and building that story of student learning. So we're gonna take a peek here. So we've made a queue and it has 12 sides. Let me show you one of the sides right here. Here's the second one. Here's the third one. Here's the fourth one, fifth one, sixth one, seventh one, eighth one, ninth one, tenth one, and twelfth one. So there are 12 sides. And as you can tell, this is a little kindergarten friend. So again, no matter what age your students are, they can still take the lead in communicating as well. And again, families are right alongside in this journey. So when they maybe are coming to you for those parent-teacher conferences or family conferences, they're not surprised, right? They have been alongside of this learning throughout their time in your classroom. So this again is a try-it opportunity. So here is a task card that actually we have getting started guides for every grade level and these task cards are included in those guides. So again, these are really simple posters that you could hang up in your classroom that students again can independently drive this communication and be posting to CISA to share their learning. Tip number three, ensure communication is accessible. So of course we wanna make sure that all families get communication from school. So when we talk about CISA in relation to this, we wanna make it really simple and accessible for all families. So it is free for families, of course, to get connected or even download the family app. It works on any device. And if you're thinking about, maybe you're thinking about the demographics of families. In many situations, families have cell phones. So they can either, maybe they can download the app if they don't have a huge data plan. Maybe they're connecting to wifi when they're at your school or a public library or other situations like that if they want to view work. I've also heard of schools that set up stations that families can use to sign in as well to their CISA account. And I wanna just point out too that when you're using CISA, notifications come to them. It's not something that families have to remember like, oh yeah, I remember there was supposed to be this blog or website I was supposed to check every week. With those notifications, it comes right to families. Again, making it more accessible for them. And of course, translation. I really wanna talk about this a little bit because we wanna make sure what we are sending is able to be, of course, understood by any family member that you're working with. So CISA actually translate text into over 55 languages. I also have a link here that shows a video of how you actually invite families if you haven't done that yet. So give that a peek if you want to when you get the slides. But I wanna highlight translation a little bit because it's so simple for some people that it gets complicated. It's really, really simple. So basically here's what happens. Translation is automatic. So what that means is anytime you type a note, a comment, a message or announcements, they are automatically, they can be automatically translated to the language that the device is set to. So in this example, this is actually a translation that actually happened from a parent back to the teacher. So you'll see that the parent, the family member actually wrote in their first language, which is Spanish. And the teacher, when they receive this message, the teacher sees the C translation option. So if they click that, it will translate the text. So again, it works for the teacher and it also works for the family the same way. So if the teacher is writing or typing in English or their student is writing and typing in English, when it goes to the family, whatever language the device is set to. So if the device is set to Somali, if it's set to French, if it's set to Chinese, it will translate those written notes, comments, messages and announcements in CSA automatically once they tap that C translation, which is pretty phenomenal. Tip number four, utilize engaging format to meet families where they are. So when we think about families today, we know life is busy. Inboxes are really, really overwhelming and time is limited. So you might have families that are working full-time. Maybe they're working two or three jobs. Maybe, you know, they're running kids around, right? There's a lot going on. So how do we make sure that families are informed and can help prepare their child for the day or whatever they need, right? So we wanna make sure it's easy, but also digestible in formats that work for families. I remember at the beginning of your conference, I remember one dad said to me, are you gonna send a lot of emails? Am I gonna get a lot of emails from you because I don't have time to read those. And he was concerned and overwhelmed with the amount of emails coming in previous years from other teachers or whatnot. And I said, no, actually do something a little bit differently. And the next slide here will give you kind of an example. So let's compare. So maybe you're someone that's doing type newsletters. So here's an example of a newsletter that long ago, before I started using CSOP, that I would type an entire, you know, full length piece of paper, right? Single space, lots of information, right? Good stuff. But how many families were reading that? I'm not sure, right? So when CSOP comes along, what about doing a video newsletter? And I love this example from Abby. And this was actually just shared this week. And I thank Abby for letting me share with the world here. So Abby is actually a PE teacher. So it was just getting it to the right spot here. And I'm gonna play this for you so you can take a listen at her video newsletter. Hey, everyone. I know we only had a short time together this week. Maybe only happened one class, but the time that we spent together was awesome. This week we explored our jump rope routine plans where you all got to plan how you were going to do your routine. Does this make a difference? Is it different than just saying, hey, show me your routine and you not have a time to think about what you're gonna do and how you're gonna perform it? So I'm not gonna play the whole thing, but I encourage you to follow the link in the slides, but also reach out to Abby and say, hey, I saw your idea, I love it. So if you just think about the different formats, so when I'm talking about accessible, digestible, something that is going to be motivating for not only families to view, but also students could as well, right? via the Family App, they could also view this as well. So think about maybe that's a shift that you wanna make or try. And again, this is really easy to do. As a teacher in CSI, you can just create a new announcement and start a video. If you wanted to do that, really, really simple. Also, this is an example from my classroom. And again, this was sent via the announcement flow to families. And this was just a short, quick visual reminders. So we were having a special favorite book day at school and I sent a quick message to families, just reminding them, again, very visual audio instructions here and also a caption. And this caption, again, because it's typed, it would be translated for families as well. Hi, families, tomorrow, Friday, if you will have your child bring their favorite book from home to school, we're gonna use it for a project that we do. And if you don't feel comfortable with them bringing a book from home, they can obviously select a book from our books in our classroom, but we're gonna be doing a project with record. So again, I think the other thing that lends itself well in these formats is it's much more personable. So back to that story of that dad that was saying, oh, I'm not gonna read these emails. If you send emails, he was the most excited about getting my audio visual newsletters that I sent or even better that my students created. So again, it might be something that they're listening to when they're waiting the line at the grocery store or they're running all over trying, life is busy, what can keep them in the loop and engaged? Tip number five, encourage three-way communication and you're thinking, what is that involved? I'm talking about students, teachers and family. So not only traditionally kind of teacher communicate with their family, but the family can also communicate back to the teacher. So when you're talking about that in CISA, that can be in the form of a private message back to the teacher from an announcement. That might also be the family leaving a comment for the student on CISA. And of course, as we mentioned before, the student can always be sharing their work to their family on CISA as well. And as we know, the relationship between the teacher and the student is also ongoing and a lot of back and forth communication there as well. But one way that I also wanna highlight that you might not be aware of and we'll get into that, but thinking about even audio comments. So again, making it a little bit more personal and speaking from my experience in kindergarten with a lot of pre-readers, if you want that feedback and communication to happen, what is going to maybe make that work better for your students? So think about that. If you want families to type in comments or if you want them rather to do audio commenting, you can also, as I mentioned, private messages between the family and the teacher are also something that is an option. And I'm gonna talk about one that again, maybe you haven't thought about yet, but this is something that really is very, very unique about CISA in the sense that from the family app, families can also respond to an announcement and use attachments. And when they tap this blue little plus sign right here in response to an announcement, they can use all the tools in CISA. So this example, I love this from Eric Robinson. So he actually did a webinar that's on our YouTube channel all about rethinking reading logs or encouraging reading at home. It's phenomenal. So if you haven't seen that yet, check it out. But basically, families can reply and maybe they're posting a video of their student, showing like, oh my goodness, we're eating pizza at home and we're learning about fractions at the same time. Or, hey, Mrs. Gaggy, look at this picture of I was reading under my pillow fort or whatever it might be a drawing that they're doing. Again, through attachments, they can actually add that through the CISA family app. So either the family can respond that way or the student could also as well. So that's kind of a safe way to bring that learning, again, full circle, not only going from school to home but back again. I wanna just talk briefly in this conversation about the journal versus the inbox. So I have a little graphic here of thinking like, should this be in the student's portfolio? So when you think about the journal, that is really the portfolio of showing growth over time. So work that students have captured or wanna share, that goes into the journal, right? And anytime that a teacher approves those posts, those are visible to that family member, okay? So you might use this if you're doing, for example, when I shared that picture of the student on the very first day of kindergarten doing that science experiment, I actually posted that to the portfolio. And again, it was only to that child's portfolio wasn't to the whole class, okay? But most of the communication you might do as a teacher would take place via the inbox flow. So that is where you would see the teacher to family communication, family to teacher communication or those sharing learnings from home, which we just talked about. So the other thing to note as well is who can see it? This is just kind of a good reminder too. So in the journal, if in your class settings you have students can see each other's work turned on, families only see work their child is tagged in. This does include any work that you tag with everyone because of course their child is included in everyone in the class. All approved comments from families are visible in the journal to all students if this is how your class is set up and families can see all comments made on any of their child's posts, okay? So if you have students that are commenting on a child's posts, that family could see that comment as well. And looking at the inbox, announcements are all connected, connected family members can see and they only see announcements after they connected not prior announcements. So keep that in mind as well. And then those private messages are only visible to the teacher and the one family member that are having that conversation. So that's just another thing to note. I wanna quickly give out the code you'll need if you're watching this recording. The code is 238-566. And again, you only need that if you're watching the recording for the certificate. I wanna just throw one more thing out at you before we go into questions. We have a great page, a website, for you to use if you are introducing CISA to families. So maybe this is at a curriculum night or a family information night. This is a good spot to go to introduce families to CISA but also show them a tour of the family side of the family app and also get them connected on the spot. So we're gonna happen to questions now. And while you are typing in those questions, I wanna just show you one more thing here as well that of course you found this session. All of our PD and PJs can be found at web.cisa.me backslashpds. Also make sure you check out our YouTube channel and subscribe there because woo, we add a lot to that spot and be the first to know when we have new stuff there. So make sure to check that out as well. So I'm gonna hop back here and answer questions for those of you that are live.