Parent Communication Forms, Logs & Newsletters

A communication log, so you can answer “when did you tell us about this?” with a date. A weekly behavior chart with two or three agreed targets, initialled at both ends so you both know the sheet made the trip. A newsletter, so “what did you do today” gets a better answer than “nothing”. And a note home that is sometimes good news, so it is not a document families learn to dread.

The other seventeen forms in the set are for the days those four do not cover: the permission slip, the missing work notice, the conference summary, the reading log, the folder cover, the homework pass.

Because the entry you need in February is almost never the conversation. It is the three unreturned calls in October, dated, before somebody says nobody told them. A log that records only completed contacts records the half of the story that was never in question.

The same logic runs through the conference summary. Filled in and signed during the conversation, it is a record you both agreed to. Written from memory that evening, it is a different document, and everyone in the room knows it.

Be specific and be short. “Stayed with a hard problem for eleven minutes” is a sentence a family repeats at dinner; “had a good day” is one they skim. The same is true in the other direction: name what happened and what was already done about it at school, and say plainly whether you need anything from them tonight.

Send two good-news notes a week and by June every family has had one. It costs about ninety seconds and it is the cheapest thing on this page.