Positive notes home are a classroom management strategy that I believe is under utilized. It just takes a few minutes at the end of the day to write 1 or 2 of these notes to send home with students that have worked hard that day. I often send home positive notes for the struggling students that meet a small goal, especially if the goal is behavior-related. Check out these 3 reasons why you should try sending positive notes home, and then download the free notes to personalize and print!
Reason #1 The Kids Love It
When you send a positive note home with a student, the other students notice. They’ll work harder knowing that they can earn a nice note to take home to their family. Sending positive notes home adds to the positive classroom environment you’re striving for. The kids will attribute the notes to the fact that their teacher is a nice, happy person that likes to talk in a positive manner about his/her students.
Reason #2 The Parents Love It
Often it seems like the only time parents are contacted is when their kids do something wrong. Adding this strategy to your arsenal gives you an excuse to contact parents in a positive manner. I remember feeling like there were a few parents I didn’t know well because I never had to contact them. Their students were shy and well behaved. This didn’t allow me to find ways to get to know them or their student better, especially because I know now that I should have been working harder to challenge those types of students!
Reason #3 You (The Teacher) Will Love It
A positive note home helps the teacher in so many ways. It helps you connect to those students that you struggled to connect to before. It puts you in a better mood when you’re writing positive things about students down (especially on a day when you’ve had to make a couple of those super fun behavior phone calls). It also gives you credibility with parents by showing them that you do really care about their student. I saw an improvement in behavior in my classroom simply from sending one of these home every day, which is reason enough to try it out!
The free resource
I print these in bulk at the beginning of the school year. I use Vistaprint because their postcard printing is very affordable. I always Google a coupon code for these and usually pay about $25 for 500 shipped. You can buy as little as 50 for around $10 shipped, but I like to buy more to save more and stay stocked up.
You can also print these on paper and cut them out, but I found it was worth the money to order them and save myself all of the work. When I printed on paper, I always seemed to be going to the copy machine to print more out. A stack of these last me all year and it takes about 10 minutes to put the order in!
Click here to download this free resource.
To customize, you will need Powerpoint and the ability to install two free fonts.
Images are included if you don’t want to customize the postcards.
Vistaprint.com postcard printing directions
Choose the standard size horizontal postcard (5.42″ x 4.21″).
On the left, choose “add images from My Computer”.
Upload the FRONT picture file from my free note home resource. Follow the same process to upload the BACK picture file to the back of the postcard.
You may get a low resolution warning. That’s ok as long as it looks clear in the preview image. See below for how your preview should look.
