Managing Contact Info and Roster Changes with ClassTag

I use ClassTag to manage parent communication with my before and after school ensemble families. Because these groups meet outside of the school day, sometimes students decide to drop out of the ensemble, and their family no longer needs to receive messages. It's really easy with ClassTag to remove students from class rosters, or to change a parent's contact information if they get a new email.

To make any changes, go to the directory tab in ClassTag.

Then, click "edit directory"

From there, click the trash icon next to a student's name to remove them from the class, the pencil icon next to a parent's contact information to update it, or the plus sign to add any additional parent. ClassTag even lets more than 2 parents per student be added, which can be very useful! 

Want to get started with ClassTag? It's a super easy and useful tool! Follow this link to get signed up! 

ClassTag Stories: Sharing Beyond Classroom Walls

I use ClassTag to manage parent communication with my before and after school ensemble families. One of the big benefits of ClassTag is that parents can get alerts via text, email, and/or in-app notification according to their preferences. In addition to announcements, ClassTag allows teachers to share Stories, a social-media-like feature where families can see what is going on in the classroom. 

My students have a concert coming up, and I decided I'd try to come up with some new ways of promoting the concert to encourage families and teachers to attend. We made a promotional video for each ensemble, and I shared it out to the staff at my school via email. Since my students' families are already using ClassTag, I sent the video out to families by creating a story and attaching the video. It was great for families to see an "inside look" at what we're doing in class, and I hope to use this feature more frequently going forward. I love the look of the stories, they are aesthetically pleasing without taking much time for me to put together. I also love that I can share out strictly to approved parents, rather than somewhere public. I am much more comfortable sharing in-process work or other details in a closed environment like ClassTag than on the open internet.

Creating Stories is a great way to communicate and connect with families! If you're already a ClassTag user, I'd encourage you to share a ClassTag story in the next few weeks. If you haven't signed up for ClassTag yet, what are you waiting for?! Sign up here for the best family communication platform there is!

#MakeItHappen Moment: How Far They've Come (and a giveaway!)

Here's my #MakeItHappen moment for Teacher Appreciation Week:

I did some decluttering today at school. A file cabinet I rarely use seemed like a good thing to attack on a Friday (don't know what I was thinking!) Among many dusty copies and broken folders, I found a stack of paper clipped student work on a worksheet I recognized. The names on the papers were students I recognized.

Apparently, I was really careful to save student work on a district-wide assessment from TWO YEARS AGO. My now-fifth graders are almost off to middle school, and yet I got to look today at their work from third grade, and see how far they've come and how much they've learned. It's always gratifying to see student growth over time, and this was it in a big way.

Want to enter to win some Teacher Appreciation Week prizes? ClassTag will hook you up!

For more about ClassTag, check out my blog posts here.

ClassTag Rewards: Perks for Parent Communication

I use ClassTag to manage parent communication with my before and after school ensemble families. One of the big benefits of ClassTag is that parents can get alerts via text, email, and/or in-app notification according to their preferences. As a teacher of a ClassTag class, you're able to opt in to ClassTag Rewards, a great program allowing you to earn classroom goodies just for using ClassTag to communicate with families. Here's a sample of the ClassTag Rewards page for one of my classes:

There are many other rewards, so I could not fit them all in one screenshot. My favorite reward available is a $15 Amazon gift card, which currently costs 2,900 ClassTag coins. As you can see, I've earned more than enough coins in this class to redeem for one with this class. The gift card allows me to buy anything I might need for my classroom (or myself) that's available on Amazon, which means there's a lot of flexibility in how I spend the reward.

In addition to the awesome Rewards program, ClassTag also has top-notch customer service. I recently had a problem redeeming a reward (my school email spam filter is a little overreactive sometimes) and their chat feature was so easy to use. The person I spoke to was super helpful and got me a new gift card code ASAP so I could shop right away. It's always nice when a company seems genuinely interested in helping its customers!

Sign up for ClassTag using my code, and you'll get some ClassTag coins to use on rewards to get you started!

--I am a ClassTag ambassador. I receive referral incentives for sharing how I use ClassTag in my teaching, but really do believe in their service and think it's useful for teachers.

Take a Break: Scheduled messages during school vacations with ClassTag

I try really hard not to do a ton of work during school breaks. I really need the time to rest, and I want to spend time with my family and friends, not worrying about work I could or should do. However, I also like to encourage students to practice their instruments over breaks, since many of them have more relaxed schedules. With ClassTag, I was able to set up messages to be sent out over break before I left school last week. It's super easy to schedule announcements for any time in the future. After clicking the giant plus sign in the right hand corner and choosing "Announcement", this screen pops up. Fill in the fields, then click "add send time" in order to schedule it for the future.

Scheduled announcements are super handy for many different purposes, and make it easier to maintain work-life balance while communicating with families at a time that works for them. ClassTag's stats let me see how many families read my announcements. I notice that they are more likely to get read if I schedule them to go out during evening hours (likely because many parents aren't working at that time), so adding a send time is an easy way to improve communication with families.

Ready to sign up for ClassTag and level up your home-school communication? Sign up here !

--I am a ClassTag ambassador. I receive ClassTag coins and referral incentives for sharing how I use ClassTag in my teaching, but really do believe in their service and think it's useful for teachers.

I hope all teachers are having a relaxing, enjoyable break!

Managing Huge School Events is a Breeze with ClassTag!

The biggest event of my school year has come and gone! October flew by since it was consumed by preparing for Cantonstock, a big music concert and fundraiser day that my school system puts on. As one of the music teachers, it's my Super Bowl. Getting information to all my students' families is essential to making the event happen. We need students to arrive at different times depending upon what groups they perform with, and need parent volunteers throughout the day to help. In addition, many students are trying to perform around sporting events and other commitments and require more detailed information on timing and logistics. ClassTag makes communicating all of that super easy!

First of all, ClassTag makes it easy to set up multiple classes. This is key for those of us who teach many different groups of students. Here's the list of classes I see in my account:

I'm able to separate out each section of my band, have a group for my Orff ensemble, and share a class that I co-teach with another teacher so we can both send out announcements and communicate with families. This is so much easier than many communication tools - no more email lists, confusing groups, or limit to the number of sections you can set up!

I was able to set up Cantonstock as an event for each of my classes. An event within ClassTag allows all the information regarding any sort of time-bound activity to be kept in one place. In addition to concerts and out-of-school events, I could see this being used to remind parents to return permission forms, or to help families remember days off school or special events like pajama day and field trips. It's really easy to create an event, and the form helps make it easy to remember to add all the details:

 ClassTag can even remind parents of events with weekly emails! It's also easy to schedule announcements about events (I set up everything in early October for an event in early November) in order to save time during those busy weeks while still keeping parents in the loop.

Events are just one feature of ClassTag, but it's a very useful one for sure. If you'd like to sign up and try it yourself, please consider using my link. Thanks for reading!

--I am a ClassTag ambassador. I receive ClassTag coins and referral incentives for sharing how I use ClassTag in my teaching, but really do believe in their service and think it's useful for teachers.

Resource Share: ClassTag

I really, truly like ClassTag and they didn't pay me to write this. I may receive an incentive if you sign up using my links in this post, however I'd recommend ClassTag with or without their affiliate program! 

As a music teacher who runs ensembles before and after school, I have to communicate with a lot of families. Emails can be really cumbersome with large groups (especially with privacy concerns) and phone calls take too long. When I have information to share with families of my students, I use ClassTag. ClassTag lets teachers communicate with families, with group and private messaging features. It also lets you schedule events and coordinate volunteers, appointments, and to-dos. Basically, it's everything you could need to get families the information they need to engage with school. It saves me countless hours and keeps parents fully informed about what's going on at school.

Setting up ClassTag is super easy. It starts with a 2 minute sign-up process, and then you're ready to make a class. I have 6 classes set up, one for each ensemble section I teach. ClassTag allows you to add co-teachers to a class, which is great for many circumstances in which 2 teachers work with the same students. It's possible to import family email addresses into ClassTag simply by copy-pasting from a spreadsheet, which is super convenient. You can also print sign-up codes for each student, or input the information manually. Once they're signed up, parents can add their phone number if they prefer SMS alerts, or can get the app for their smartphone and receive messages there.

Using ClassTag is even easier than setting it up! There are plenty of options to make ClassTag as customized as you want it, but sending an announcement requires just a few clicks and typing out your message. There's a handy preview screen before sending, which I think is a great feature. I use announcements to communicate class cancellations, reminders, home practice assignments, and any other information that I want families to know. Links and attachments can be used in announcements to help direct parents to other information.

The private message system within ClassTag is also a nice tool. Parents can ask you a question without having to search for your email or phone extension, and you can answer when it's convenient. There's a demo class that lets you test all of these cool features out without sending it out to an actual class, which I really like.

I highly recommend ClassTag for parent communication, and I believe the system is especially well-suited to music teachers. Please consider using my link to sign up if I've convinced you, or ask any questions that might help you decide if ClassTag is the right family engagement tool for you.