Creatively Teaching: State of the Class Address

For some additional thoughts on creatively teaching see here. 

Last year, I would occasionally (occasionally meaning at the most often once a month) would send out a class newsletter. I post all of my assignments on Google Classroom, have a class website which houses all of my information, send out daily Tweets and Remind texts/emails, and I send out a weekly Plans of the Week email (which is copied from my class blog. The special education department at my school also has a working Google Doc that all 6th grade teachers fill out their plans for the week as well. Honestly, there isn't any excuse from parents or students to not know what is happening in class. There really isn't anything that I'm not transparent about. I've found that the more info you give, the less that questions you receive.

I felt that I wanted to give a little more info this year and decided to do a State of the Class Address. I've been doing them weekly. I'm not sure if weekly is too much because they do take a little time, but we'll see how that continues. 

We had parent/teacher conferences this past week and a lot of the parents brought up the State of the Class Addresses. They thought that they were very helpful in knowing what was happening in class (they also like Remind.) Most of them mentioned they appreciated the humor, as well. 

At the beginning of the year, it was more about what was happening. After viewing some of my friend, Joey Holt's Last Week In Review, I decided to add some content recap. So, now I'm adding in some content review (mostly testable material) as well.  It offers up another way for the students to hear the content one more time and help some to remember it from the weekend. 

For me personally, it's kind of been my creative outlet this school year so far. Because I'm repeating a lot of content from last year, this provides me a way to feel creative and keep me from being stagnant.

Here's A YouTube Playlist of My State of the Class Addresses.