At the beginning of the school year, my students receive an agenda book in which they write their daily assignments. I write a letter to parents that explains why their chilren have the agenda and I tell parents that they need to initial the book each night. This is to ensure that they have seen their child's assignments. Another important reason I want them to check the agendas is because I often write notes to parents in that book, and I want to make sure the parents see the notes. (The notes give a short synopsis of their child's activities in school that week, and they are mostly positive.)
Throughout the year, I remind parents to initial the agenda books during face-to-face conversations, on my class website, and telephone calls. It never fails, though, that there are parents who seemingly never look at the book. Since I teach second graders, I don't want to penalize the children for something their parents are responsible for doing. Other teachers I've talked to keep the kids in at recess or give some other type of punishment. I just think this is wrong.
With the approach of the new school year, I will again ask that parents check the daily assignment book and initial it each day. Does anyone have any ideas about what I can do to get the parents to honor this one simple request from me? I don't know how the rest of you out there feel, but I don't have enough time to call every parent weekly, mainly because most parents will keep me on the phone way longer than I'd like. I want the parents to know that they can keep up with what their children are doing in my class if they'd just check the book. Any ideas?