Curriculum Night (also known as Back-to-School Night or Meet the Teacher) can be stressful! Just getting through a normal week of instruction is hard enough but when you add the extra layer of preparing for Curriculum Night, it can feel like you are drowning in a pool of tasks. But getting ready for Curriculum Night can be stress-free if you follow a few of these tips.
What is Curriculum Night or Back-to-School Night?
Curriculum Night is an opportunity for parents to go into the classroom and meet the teacher in person. Parents and guardians will learn about:
- Curriculum for that specific grade
- Projects that will be completed
- Academic Standards
- Field Trips for that school year
- Teacher expectations
How to Prepare for Curriculum Night
Early Planning is Key
As a veteran teacher, I have learned over the years to plan Open House early! When I first started teaching, I would scramble to have students do projects the week before that we could display for Open House. Not only was I stressed, but I put unnecessary pressure on my students to get their projects done. I knew there had to be a better way.
Share Project Examples from the Previous Year
If there are certain projects that your students are going to complete throughout the year, show examples to parents either physically or with images on a slide show. If you save example projects from the previous year you can display them during your presentation.
Organize and Clean Up Your Classroom
Our classroom is like our second home. I don’t know about you, but I have a stash of snacks, sunscreen, hand lotion,(even a toothbrush), and all sorts of stuff to make me feel comfortable.
But just like our normal home, our classroom can get so disorganized. So take the opportunity to clean it up and organize it before Open House.
Try your best to put everything where it belongs. If you’re really desperate (like I sometimes am) just put everything in cabinets and deal with it later.
What Should You Do with Piles of Paper?
In our field, student papers just tend to pile up. Go through them and see what you will definitely need that will be inputted as grades. But if you are still holding on to worksheets your students completed a while back and are not major assignments, toss them. Believe me, if it’s been the past two or three weeks since your students turned it in, your students have long forgotten about it.
If you have the time, by all means, go on and correct them. But if you are under a lot of stress, I give you permission to toss the work. Not every assignment has to be graded.
Get Your Presentation Ready
If it’s Meet the Teacher or Curriculum Night you want to have presentation slides discussing the curriculum that you will be teaching throughout the year plus any classroom procedures that parents need to know about. If you are pressed for time, you can get my editable Meet the Teacher Presentation HERE in English and Spanish.
Create your presentation a few days before using PowerPoint, Google Photos, or Canva. All have a feature to add transitions and to set the slides to advance automatically. Be sure to set the slideshow to play continuously and add some music to create a fun welcoming atmosphere. Test your presentation at least an hour before parents arrive, just in case you run into any problems.
Hang Up a Welcome Sign
Don’t assume that your parents know where your classroom is. If you don’t have your name posted outside your classroom, consider hanging up a Welcome sign.
Send Out a Flyer
Your school administrators will normally send out a flyer for Back to School Night, but it doesn’t hurt to send them one of your own. You can either print it out or send an image of the flyer on your classroom messaging system like ClassDojo or Parent Square.
Click HERE to get these signs
What to do during Curriculum Night
To make Curriculum Night or Back-to-School Night more fun and interactive, you want to give your students and parents something to do while you wait for more parents to arrive. There is nothing worse than awkward silence, so have them do a few activities. Keep it simple so that you aren’t overwhelmed with planning.
Interactive Activities for Parents and Students
Photo Booth Background
Your parents will be taking photos of their children to capture memories of when they were in elementary so create a background where they can take photos. Decorate the background with balloons and a sign that says the year and Open House. Use a tripod stand that parents can use to take a picture with their cell phone (if you happen to have one)
Estimation Activity
Get a jar and fill it up with jelly beans and have your parents guess how many jelly beans are inside. The Dollar Tree has affordable jars and jelly beans. Attach one recording sheet on a clipboard so parents can write their names and estimation.
The next day, I go over the results with my students. The parent who is the closest gets to have their child take home the jelly beans. Be sure to put the jelly beans in a ziploc bag so you have the jar the following year.
Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader Quiz?
Your students will get a kick out of seeing their parents taking a quiz. Post a list of questions about topics that you and your students have been working on with answer sheets they can write on. Make sure to have an answer key posted on the wall face down.
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Get your FREE Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader Quiz along with answer key and recording sheet. You’ll also receive my best teaching tips and FREE resources. Opt-out anytime.
What to Do After Curriculum Night
You made it! Curriculum Night is over. Now what? Get a glass of wine and kick up your feet. It’s over, well, not really. Make sure you do two more things.
Send thank-you notes or emails
Make sure to thank parents for coming to Open House through whatever messaging system you use. It’s a nice way to connect with parents and to keep communication with them.
You can get all these resources HERE
I hope these Meet the Teacher tips have given you some ideas on how to make the night a positive experience for your students and parents. You got this! Giselle
