Hi families!
Here's your quick look at what's happening in [Class Name] this week:
What We're Learning
[Brief 2-3 sentence description of the current unit or topic]
Upcoming Assignments & Due Dates
• [Assignment], due [Date]
• [Test/Quiz] on [Date]
What to Do at Home
[Any practice, reading, or preparation students should do]
Reminders
• [Any upcoming events, field trips, supply needs, etc.]
Questions? Just reply to this email. I'm happy to help.
Have a wonderful week,
[Your Name]
Replace the bracketed placeholders with your own details before sending. Save your finished version somewhere easy to find so you can reuse it next year.
How to use this email
When to send it
Pick one slot in the week and defend it. Friday during your planning period is the common choice, because the week is finished and nothing new is going to land in it. Sunday evening gets opened more, but it costs you a Sunday, and a newsletter you resent writing does not survive October.
Send the first one in the first two weeks of the year, before there is any bad news to deliver. Families who have heard from you six times about ordinary things read the seventh message, the one about their own kid, completely differently.
What to change before you send
- Put every family in BCC and your own address in the To line. The note above the template says this and it is worth saying twice. One address in the To field exposes the whole class list, and it takes one parent hitting reply-all to turn your update into a thread you cannot stop.
- Delete any section you cannot fill every single week. Four headings you can always answer beat six you have to fake. A "What to Do at Home" block with nothing real under it teaches families to stop opening the email, and they will stop for the week you needed them.
- Write dates as dates, never as "next week." A parent reading on Tuesday has no idea when you wrote it. "Thursday the 12th" survives being forwarded and read late.
- Say when you actually answer email. "Just reply to this email" sets up an expectation you will break at nine on a Wednesday night. "I read email in the morning and answer within a school day" is a promise you can keep in May.
- Find out whether any of your families need this in another language. Ask your front office what your school already uses before you paste your text into whatever translator is free.
What a good reply looks like
Almost nobody replies, and that is the thing working as designed. The real measure of this email is the questions you stop getting.
The replies you do get cluster into three kinds: a question about one due date, a heads-up that a kid will be out, an offer to send in supplies. Answer the first two in a sentence. Say yes to the third.
When the week gets away from you, and it will, send a shorter one instead of skipping. Two lines about what is due beats a gap, because gaps are what these die of. If you miss a week entirely, do not open the next one with an apology. Just send it.