Back to School: Get to Know Me Letter

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It’s officially back-to-school season! While the schools in my area don’t start back for another three weeks, the first back-to-school photos from friends in other areas have already started to hit my Facebook and Instagram feeds. That means it’s time to think about how you want your child to kick off the school year.

As an educator going into my 18th year, I know how important teacher-student relationships are to learning. When a teacher knows a child as an individual, it helps them make connections between what they are teaching and the life of the student.

For example, if a teacher knows that a student is really interested in cars, they can be sure to include books about cars in their classroom libraries for independent reading time. Teachers can incorporate cars into math by writing word problems that include facts about cars or help students understand how math is important when it comes to building cars They can encourage students to build their writing skills by asking them to produce descriptive paragraphs about their favorite cars or how-to essays about rebuilding car engines. The possibilities are endless!

Often, getting to know every one of the 20, 25, 30, or more students in a class, can be a daunting task. When students are shy or not excited about school, this can be even more difficult. When I had my own classroom, I took  time to sit down with every student one on one and have a conversation with them to try to dig into some “getting to know you” work, but sometimes it would take a month (or longer when I was teaching multiple classes of middle school students) to get through everyone.

To help this move along, I would encourage students to write me a “Get to Know Me” letter at the beginning of the school year. Sure, it didn’t give me a complete picture of every child, but it helped move me along the path of building my classroom into a place built on knowing each other so that the best learning could take place.

That’s why I created this “Get to Know Me” letter to send to your child’s teacher at the start of the new school year. I encourage you to really let your child complete this on their own as much as possible. Some of their answers might even surprise you! Download your own copy here!

And, while we are on the topic of back to school, what school supplies list would be complete without products from Crayola? Right now, Crayola has a great sale on their products for back to school shopping. Be sure to follow this link to receive your 20% off!    Through Sept 15th – 20% Off 5+ Back To School Essentials with BTS2018