Sue Gaardboe
We have been using the Seesaw app for a year now, to communicate between teachers and the families of students in their class. We hoped that the use of the app would enable teachers to share some of the exciting and delightful things that happen in class, and to provide prompts for parents to have conversations with their children about school. Seesaw provides the opportunity to share information, photos and videos, and to message groups and individuals. The feedback we have had from both sides – parents and teachers – has been very positive.
As a school we have set the following minimum expectations for the levels of communication we would like to happen through seesaw, across every class in the school:
- Every week, parents should expect to receive a whole-class post which gives some information about learning the class is engaged in. This might be a photo prompt about an activity they are about to begin, or it may be a brief description or photos of a particular activity the whole class engaged in during the week. We hope this will provide a conversation starter for you with your child, so “What did you do at school today?” might be turned into “I see your class is working on…What can you teach me about that?”
- Every term, each family should receive 2 personal positive communications about their child, from the classroom teacher. This may be a photo or positive feedback on work the individual student is engaged in. We recommend to teachers that the student has a part in choosing the work they would like to share with their family.
- In addition, we would like all students from years 2-7 to be actively posting their own personal messages regarding their learning, to their family.
Teachers have also been requested to respond in a timely manner to any messages received from parents between the hours of 7.30am and 6pm. Outside those hours, teachers are expected to be working on their work/life balance!
We would love to have feedback on your experiences with Seesaw. We know that there are some things we can do better, and we hope there are things about Seesaw that you are really enjoying. Please let us know by emailing the school at brightonps.info@schools.sa.edu.au and including Seesaw in the subject line.
I really like see saw it’s fast effective and to the point. Its a quick way to text the teacher and get reminders for notes, excursions etc. It’s better than diaries and wasting paper and news letters. It’s geeat seeing what’s going on in the class room because I can make connections with the learning at home. This helps my son build a deeper understanding and life long learning. I do think though teachers should only be available 8-5. Thanks bps great job! Also I hear through ‘my school bag’ you can sign notes on an app! Ps I love Qkr too! 😉 if only we could roll them into one app.