Writing an amazing weekly teacher newsletter does not have to be a dreaded task. Follow these tips to learn how to make it an efficient part of your teaching week that helps families know what is going on in the classroom!
Disclaimer- I don’t care about cute newsletters. I am focused on getting important curricular and school/classroom event information in front of the eyeballs of my student’s families. The information below is helpful tips on how to get yourself setup and organized for writing a well written teacher newsletter. I am warning you now, there are no cutesy graphics or instruction/resources for including them in a teacher newsletter.
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Keep it Organized in Google Drive
Naming Your Teacher Newsletter Files
When my fifth grade team and I started to send detailed weekly newsletters, we started a doc in our google drive accounts and called it ‘5th Grade Newsletter.’ As you can imagine, over the years this was not a helpful name as it became confusing what school year we were referring to in the newsletter.
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My team and I found that we needed to start naming our newsletter after the school year we were currently in. This way we can have a record of past school year newsletters and the one we are currently in. So for the 2022-2023 school year, we named that doc, 22/23 newsletter.
Here is a picture of what our newsletter docs look like after a few years.
This way it is helpful to look at previous year’s information and then copy and paste any pertinent information. This school year (22-23) is helpful if we go back a few years as we resume more pre-pandemic activities like field trips and classroom parties(Anyone else out there a little fuzzy on how to fill out a field trip request form? Who knew some things would slip out of my memory).
Setting up the Current School Year’s Teacher Newsletter in Google Doc
If you have a google account, follow these steps-
- Open up a new document.
- Name the document the current school year- 23/24 Newsletter for example
- In the doc go to insert table
- Select two columns and make as many rows as you can. If you send out a weekly newsletter you will end up using at least 36 rows, one for each newsletter. I think I usually set it up with 10 rows at the beginning of the year and then add a row each week once a newsletter has been created in each row.
- On the left hand column, type the date you plan to send the newsletter
- On the right column, type in the newsletter information. As you add new newsletters, add them to the top of the table. This way the newest, most recent information is at the top and you don’t have to scroll, scroll, scroll to get to the part you need.
- Once you are done typing up your newsletter, highlight the text, copy and past it into your email.
- Send your email at the same time each week or each time you plan to send an email. I will typically work on my newsletters each Friday morning and will schedule the email to be sent out at 1:30 each Friday.
Make Your Teacher Newsletter Visually Appealing and Easy to Read
I structure my teacher newsletters the same way each week. Here is how the rough structure will look:
Dear Fifth Grade Families,
Any important dates should go first– picture day, local assessments, field trips etc.
Academic updates– each subject will get its own paragraph
In Math,
In Reading,
In Writing,
In Science,
In Social Studies,
In Social Emotional Learning, (My school has an SEL lesson taught by a social worker twice a month, so we usually add a blurb about the information covered)
Let me know if you have any questions or concerns. (I usually write this at the beginning of the year for a few newsletters, then I drop it off once I have gotten to know my students and their families)
Have a great weekend!
Sign teacher’s name
Make the Information Stand Out
When typing up the information for the newsletter, we bold, underline and italicize important dates, actions to take or key concepts being learning. Here is an example excerpt about reading:
In Reading, students learned about sound devices and figurative language in poetry. Students reviewed the rhythm, rhyme, rhyme scheme, end rhymes and internal rhymes, as well as alliteration and onomatopoeia. We discussed how these all add to ideas or feelings being expressed in poetry. We reviewed that poems have a different structure than prose, with words written in lines and stanzas. Many of the students shared that they do not enjoy poetry. If you are able, please take some time to read some collections of poetry aloud to the students- Shel Silverstein, Jack Prelutsky are a few poets that are fun to read aloud.
Make Teacher Newsletter a Team Effort
If you are a grade level that switches for a few classes (departmentalizes), you could have each teacher update their subject area. This only works well if everyone is open to the idea and able to have their portion of the newsletter completed by the agreed upon timeline.
At my school, we departmentalize for shared reading, science and writing and I am the teacher that typically updates the email and then shares it with the other teachers. We have had our newsletter for so many years and the same curricular resources that I am pretty confident in writing the information from my fellow teachers- even though I haven’t taught the science or writing lessons. I just copy and paste what they wrote from previous newsletters.
If you do your own email and don’t share it with your teammates, be thoughtful in the years that you have multiples (twins, triplets, quads). It’s in your best interest to have consistent messaging going home to all families, but especially when two or more students in the same home are in the same grade level.
Collect Email Addresses
My school uses PowerSchool for taking attendance and maintaining parent contact information. I used to enter email addresses into my Google Contact form, but something changed on Google’s end a few years ago and became a pain in the butt. There is a way you could have parents fill out a Google Form and have them enter their email address directly into the form. This might be something you want to try if you don’t have email addresses in an easy to grab format.
BCC the Recipients of the Teacher Newsletter
Every week when I send out an email address, I select all of the email addresses from PowerSchool and then enter everyone’s email address in the bcc line of the email address. BCC means ‘Blind Carbon Copy.’ It’s like a private CC (Carbon Copy) of an email.
I make it a point to use the bcc line for a few reasons. First, it helps to maintain everyone’s privacy and keeps other parent’s contact information private from one another. The second, and most important reason, is that it keeps parents from accidentally replying all and sharing unintended information with the rest of the parents.
It might not be a big deal if everyone finds out that Lisa has a dentist appointment on Tuesday morning, but it is a little uncomfortable to see a comment about a bad score someone got on a math test or if a parent is looking for outside counseling services.
Needless to say, if you aren’t already using it, make BCC your friend.
Who else should get the teacher newsletter?
When putting in everyone’s address, I send it to my school email address so that I have a copy. Then I put everyone else’s email in the Bcc line. I also send it to other teachers who like to have an update of what is going on in fifth grade.
I will usually send it to the EL teacher, RtI teacher, Resource teacher, speech, OT and the social worker. Sometimes I might send it to my principal if there is an important piece of parent communication that is beyond the usual weekly curriculum update- field trip information, Too Good For Drugs graduation information or student-led parent teacher conferences for example.
Keeping a Consistent Teacher Newsletter Schedule
I type my newsletters up on Friday mornings while my students are at specials. Based off of the efficient tactics I share in the next section, the newsletter only takes me about 10-15 minutes to write in a normal week.
Once I finish writing and getting the teacher newsletter set up in my email, instead of sending the email immediately I do a schedule send for the email to go out at 1:30 PM. I like to let the email sit for bit to check with the other teachers to make sure everything important was included and I didn’t miss anything for the week in my rush to get the newsletter done.
I specifically pick 1:30 and not the end of the school day, because this helps me handle and parent responses before I leave school for the weekend. I intentionally do not check my school email until Monday morning.
Look Back to Previous Year’s Newsletters
It only takes me about 10-15 minutes to type up my weekly fifth grade newsletters, all the while being complemented on how informative and helpful the newsletters are. How do I do this? It all goes back to my organization in google drive. I start out by looking at the previous week’s newsletter, copy and paste everything that is still the same.
Then I go into my old newsletters and copy and paste any new academic information. In social studies every year we start out with a unit on Economics, then we move on to Explorers and we follow, for the most part, the same lesson plans each year, with a few updates. So when we get to Marco Polo and the Silk Road in social studies, I look toward the newsletter I sent in previous years and scroll to the beginning of September and then I copy and past. Most of the information is already to go from year to year.
However, there are times where we will start a new curricular resource. We started a new math program during the pandemic (that was fun) and I am now piloting a new reading program. Obviously the information will change, so I use the Teacher’s Guide and open up to the beginning of the weekly lessons to the teacher pages about methodology and focus. I typically take the words that they have shared directly from their, type them into student friendly language and voila, I have an updated newsletter.
While this may take a bit of time the first year you go through creating newsletters, it does not have to be a chore. This is a great way to extend student learning at home, develop trust with families and gain support if you are ever in need of it.
Check Out My Related Parent Communication Posts
Parent Teacher Conference Ideas & Resources
The Magic of the Teacher Read Aloud
How To Find Good Books For Your Students To Read
How About You?
How often do you send out a teacher newsletter? Do you use a Google Doc to organize your information? I would love to hear what others have found works or doesn’t work for sending out newsletters.
