Fostering the Home-School Connection Through Friday Letters

Teachers everywhere embrace the importance of a solid connection between home and school and strive to build positive and respectful parent partnerships. All teachers understand the value of volunteers and the need for parent involvement and support, but not all parents can spend time in our classrooms. Writing weekly Friday letters to parents keeps them connected even when they can’t visit our classrooms.

Friday Letters Connect Parents to Your Classroom

Every parent wants to know what their child is learning and how they are doing in school. One fun and informative way to keep your parents connected to your classroom is through Friday letters. Every Friday my students write a letter home telling their parents and families all about their week at school.

Fostering the home-school connection through Friday Letters. Tips for using this simple, yet powerful tool with your students -plus a free letter writing starter kit with parent note to get you started.

Parents respond by writing a letter back to their child on the reverse-side of the page.

Students return the letters to school where we file and save them. At the end of the year, I bind all of their letters into keepsake books for students to take home.

A Simple, Yet Powerful Tool

Friday Letters. Writing a letter every Friday to Mom and Dad. It’s such a simple little thing, but a powerful one. Besides cultivating a consistent connection between my students’ homes and my classroom, I learn a lot from these letters. They give me weekly insight into my students’ thoughts and feelings, excitements and anxieties, about school, their friends, what happens at home, and even how they feel about the food in the cafeteria.

Friday letters give me a window into things that my students may not tell me, but tell their parents. They afford me opportunities to see where I can quietly intervene or partner with parents to help a child socially, support them more emotionally, or even to celebrate accomplishments outside of school that I may not otherwise know about.

Review Skills At A Glance

Academically speaking, I can see at a glance who is mastering and applying a variety of skills:

writing conventions
grammar
capitalization
correct use of punctuation
complete sentences
writing the date
use of transition words
compound sentences
vocabulary knowledge

Review The Format Of A Friendly Letter

At the beginning of the year, we review the format of, and how to write, a friendly letter. This is something our first graders learn, but I always spend time reteaching the purpose, the parts and the punctuation of a friendly letter. My goal is to get them started towards writing these letters independently. I recommend this Friendly Letter writing unit that is ideal for Writer’s Workshop or for reviewing this important life skill.

What Can I Write About?

At the beginning of the year when I introduce our writing journal routines, one of the first mini-lessons we do is “What Can I Write About?” We make a list on the first page of the journals of all the things they can write about. These come in handy on Fridays, too.

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For the first few weeks, we brainstorm whole group and list on the board all of the things we learned and did during the week they could write about in their letters. Sometimes we make a big bubble map and sometimes we make a list. Sometimes we even make a tree map with the days of the week as the categories.

These are quick teachable moments to talk about the purpose of different graphic organizers and how they can help us plan our writing. Later, they will do this on their own in their writing journals. The one thing we always do the same every.single.week is to end our letters with a question. This gives the recipient a start to writing back.

Make Friday Letters Manage Themselves

This routine will manage itself after a few weeks of practicing the procedure. I train my class to file their letters all going the same way, behind their previous letter. They can do this when they first arrive or at the end of the day. I found this filing cart at a garage sale years ago and it’s been perfect for storing and saving students’ writing portfolios. A crate would work well also.

Friday Letters manage themselves once you train your students.

Each hanging file has a student number and a file folder (their writing portfolio) inside. The Friday letters go behind the file folder. At the end of the year I even have my students go through their own letters to make sure they’re set and organized before binding. If you don’t have access to a comb binder a heavy duty stapler works great too.

Managing Friday Letters and writing portfolios.

Flip Your Friday Letters

I’ve gotten many questions over the years about what to do when parents don’t write back to their child. I resolve that issue in two ways.

I ask my student if they would like to write their letters and keep them all in their file, without sending them home, so they still have a keepsake book at the end of the year.
I flip the Friday Letters and have students write to me. I write them back and they file the letters for their keepsake book. they have a book of letters to their teacher instead of to parents.

Flipping your Friday letters during school closures or school breaks is a wonderful way to stay connected to your students. Instead of writing to parents, students write weekly letters to their teacher. The free starter kit below includes a book cover that says, “Weekly letters to my teacher” if you need it.

But the Year Has Already Started

It’s easy to get started writing Friday letters with your class. You don’t have to start at the beginning of the year, you can start anytime. Just send home this parent letter explaining how it works and start writing!

Get a Free Friday Letters Starter Kit

Inside the starter kit:

Ready to use parent letters
Editable parent letters
6 Book covers-For letters written to parents/caregivers and letters written to the teacher.
3 Styles of book covers for younger and older students
6 Stationary pages in 2 line styles
Graphic organizers

Where To Get Letter Writing Templates

I get lots of questions about where I get the stationary we use. I created a set of 100 thematic letter writing papers that we use all year. You can get this helpful resource, that includes both primary and elementary handwriting lines, in my website shop or in my Teachers Pay Teachers store and be set for the year!

I hope this post has been helpful as you consider ways you can continue to foster your home & school connections and parent partnerships! Help another teacher by sharing this post on your social media channels and pin it so you have it when you plan.