Week 3: "Back to School" letter to Parents

I am now in my 3rd week of class and I am learning more and more everyday about technology in the classroom. As a young professional I use technology very often in my everyday life. At work, I use Excel to make spreadsheets, Publisher to make flyers, and Word to create emails and letters. It is so important that students learn to use all of the different software at an early age so that they are up to date anything their employer or life may throw at them. Technology will only continue to be more important in everyday life. In this week’s reading assignments and lessons, I was really surprised at all the ideas I had never thought of in using word processing and desktop publishing in the classroom.


As a teacher, I will use many of the ideas I learned during this week’s lesson in my classroom. First off, I will use desktop publishing in creating letterheads and newsletters to send my students’ parents. Communicating with parents is important in a student’s success. I will also be sure that my elementary students will use a form of desktop publishing or word processing in many of their lessons. Everything from making story webs on the computer for books they are reading, “travel” brochures for islands they are researching, to using word processing in sending letters to a pen pal. All of this will be used in my classroom.

Although I am not yet teaching, I am still very familiar with what makes a certain visual aid appealing. In newsletters and flyers, I think it is important for them to be organized and neat, but on the other hand bright and cheery, depending on what the reason for the visual aid is. I created a “Back to School” letter to parents from Microsoft Publisher. After creating this, I believe it will be one that I use when I have my own classroom in hopefully a year from now . You have to be careful in making sure that the items you make are visually appealing and distract from the message. Sometimes, too much color and pictures can be an overload and distract from the original message. In the letter I made for my students’ parents, it is very clear what I am trying to do. First off, the title is bold which tells the parents it is Back to School and more than likely prepares them for what the year will hold. I tried to make it cheery and positive with the border and small pictures, but included the body of the message in the middle. The information is all together in one area, which makes it easy for the parents to read and understand. I have attached my “Back to School” letter. How do you think I did?