Communicating with students and parents

As most of you probably do, I use electronic communication to keep in touch with students' families. Most of the time email is the best way to go for me. But often there are families who are not quite as crazy frequent in checking email as I am. Sometimes, I just need to get a quick message out about a change in homework, info about the days field trip, or some other brief but timely reminder. I've seen info about an option for texting parents through Remind101 but didn't understand how it all worked.

Tonight I finally checked into the program and I'm definitely going to add this to my plan for this year! With Remind101 parents can quickly and simply join your class. Then you can send a text reminder at any time to the entire group and even schedule a text to go out in the future. I like this idea to be able to give quick reminders of library day, last minute changes, etc. If you end up adding a text late in the evening, it even reminds you that it seems kind of late, do you really want to send that now? You have the choice to preschedule the text to go out in the future at a better time. And it's super simple!

The big deal about Remind101 is that parents will not have your phone # and you don't need to add theirs. Also, they cannot reply through this. If they need to reach you, they still go through your regular email.
Check it out!