Parent communication is a vital part of education. It has a great impact on a student’s performance and many benefits. All parents should maintain a good relationship with the school and teachers. It boosts the confidence of students and improves their classroom involvement. It also allows teachers to share classroom activities with parents.
What is parent communication?
Parent communication is the interaction and involvement of parents in a child’s education. It’s important for parents to maintain a healthy relationship with teachers. It allows teachers to share classroom activities, the behavior of students, and their grades with parents easily. Parents also get ideas from schools about how to support students from home. Parent-teacher communication also helps parents to know the strengths and interests of their children. Parents develop a greater appreciation for the important role they play in their children’s education. There are many ways for parents to communicate with schools. Parents can interact with schools using emails, SMS, or school apps. Schools apps offer the most efficient way for parents to communicate with teachers.
How effective parent communication impacts the academic performance of students?
Effective parent communication always has a positive impact on the performance of students. It helps students in a variety of ways.
Improved behavior
The behavior of the students increases if their parents are friendly with the teachers. They also feel more confident and enthusiastic inside the classroom. In addition, if parents are regularly communicating with teachers, students feel more secure and attached to the classroom activities.
Better learning atmosphere
Healthy parent-teacher communication offers a better learning atmosphere for the students. As a result, the classroom becomes more inviting and engaging for students. In addition, since teachers share classroom activities with parents constantly, the classroom becomes the best place to learn.
Better grades and performance
Students score higher marks when parents and teachers collaborate to celebrate student success. Students also like to attain leadership positions, awards and scholarships.
Improved soft skills
Effective parent communication helps children to improve their soft skills. It allows students to share everything with teachers. They know that the teachers will discuss it with parents and find an ideal solution. Children will never find it difficult to talk with teachers if their parents maintain a healthy relationship with school.
The benefits of effective parent communication in schools
Helps parents to create a healthy relationship with teachers.
Parents are able to feel comfortable coming to their child’s teacher with any concerns they may have, and teachers can explain what is happening in the classroom in order to increase understanding. By being able to communicate openly, both the teachers and the parents can keep a close eye on the child.
Allows parents to better understand their child’s progress
Parents are able to understand the journey that their child will go on during the year, what topics they will be studying and how different skills will be developed. Parents and teachers can also observe a child’s academic growth as well as their emotional development and social needs.
It keeps parents informed what’s happening at school
When teachers and parents communicate regularly, teachers can provide parents with information about school events and classroom volunteer opportunities. Parents, when they are made aware of these opportunities, often find themselves excited to participate and be a part of the classroom.
It creates a positive social community at school
Effective parent communication creates a positive community of parents, teachers and students. It helps the child to play an active role in their own education. It also gives ownership to the child to want to improve their knowledge and skill set. It makes them understand the importance of working together and utilising other people’s knowledge to develop their own.
How school apps facilitate effective parent communication
School apps offer the best way to facilitate effective parent communication.
Instant messaging
Most of the school apps offer an instant messaging feature. This feature allows parents to communicate with teachers effectively. The messages sent are delivered instantly. Parents can communicate with teachers from anywhere. Most of the school apps don’t charge for messages. This chat feature is free for teachers and parents.
Easy to use
School apps are easy to use. It allows parents to access the app using their smartphones with ease. The user-friendly interface allows parents to use the app without much confusion.
File sharing
This feature allows the users to share images, videos and documents. It improves the quality of communication between parents and teachers.
Emergency messaging
This important feature enables teachers to reach parents in emergency situations. For example, if a student has any health issues, teachers can quickly notify parents using emergency messaging.
Language translator
This inbuilt feature enables parents to communicate in any language they prefer. All language barriers can be avoided using this feature.
Stories
Teachers can share classroom activities as pictures and videos with parents using the Stories feature. It allows teachers to post these images as Stories and parents can enjoy their child’s classroom activities form their homes.
Best 10 school apps that can facilitate effective parent communication in schools
Here are top 10 school apps that can facilitate effective parent communication in schools. Each of these apps offer different features.
Schoolvoice
Schoolvoice is a comprehensive app that promotes effective parent communication in schools. The user-friendly interface allows parents to communicate with teachers with ease. This useful app is compatible with all smart devices. These valuable features makes Schoolvoice the most wanted app for parents.
Actionable Messages
The actionable messages enable teachers to communicate with important school announcements, request school fee payments, and announce circulars with predefined reply buttons to improve parent engagement.
Instant Messaging
This feature allows parents to initiate a chat with teachers using the app. Instant Messaging is a built-in chat facility that enables you to send and respond to messages immediately.
Stories
The Story is a feature that allows authorized staff and teachers to share class activities as videos and pictures with parents, so they enjoy viewing their loved ones having fun at school. It improves student engagement and their soft skills.
Teacher’s Drive
Teachers can store academic files, mark sheets, and certificates in this cloud storage. Parents and students can access Teacher’s Drive to access homework, class materials, and other documents too.
Rewards and Challenges
Rewards and Challenges help teachers reward students’ soft skills and achievements by giving them digital stickers and trophies as positive encouragement.
Contactless payment
This feature allows students to carry a digital wallet to schools. Parents can easily provide money to students via this wallet. Students can use this money to pay canteen bills, stationery bills, etc., at the school.
ClassDojo
Classdojo is another educational app that facilitates effective parent communication. Students and parents can easily access the app by logging in using a QR code scanner. In addition, it can be integrated with other applications like DataDog, Google Translate, and Zendesk. Classdojo can translate over 30 different languages. It allows parents to communicate in any language they prefer. The major highlights of this app are
Messenger
Parents can easily send a direct message to the teachers using this feature. The read receipt also allows parents to find who has read their messages.
Creating Groups
Classdojo allows teachers to create as many groups or classes as they want. Students can join these groups from their smartphones easily.
File sharing
Classdojo also allows parents to exchange images, videos, and documents with teachers easily. It improves parent communication by reducing the confusion.
Quiet Hours
This feature allows teachers to set time for their rest and break. Students can also use this time as a break.
Remind
Remind offers an ideal platform for parents to communicate with teachers. It also allows users to share files, schedule classes, and school trips, etc. Remind supports 100 different languages and offers google drive integration to share documents and attachments. Teachers and parents can communicate in any language as the in-built translator removes language barriers. Remind also allows users to integrate with other applications like Google Classroom and Google Drive for easy use. The features of Remind includes,
Messages
This feature allows parents to send and receive messages easily. It also allows sending announcements to a particular group of people.
File sharing
Parents can share images, videos, and documents using this option. Parents can easily select files from your device and share them instantly.
People
Teachers can easily manage and reach their contacts from this feature. It has different categories like students, parents, and teachers for easy access.
Class
Teachers can create and manage all their classes under this feature. Students can easily join these classes without fail.
Classting
This free school app allows parents to communicate effectively with teachers. It features a messenger option that allows parents to communicate directly with respective teachers. In addition, the user-friendly interface will enable parents to communicate with teachers without any difficulty. Innovative features like Ting, Posts, and so on make Classting a perfect school app.
Posts
Teachers can post announcements, pictures, and videos on their walls so that parents and students can see them.
Messenger
This feature allows parents to send messages directly to teachers. The messages are delivered instantly, and users can reply quickly.
Ting
Ting is the most important and valuable feature for teachers. This feature allows teachers to combine two classes.
Edmodo
Edmodo allows parents to interact easily with teachers. It is one of the best apps for parents that promotes effective parent communication. Using Edmodo, teachers can organize activities like quizzes and competitions. It improves the engagement of students in classroom activities. It has a group feature that enables teachers to create and share information with a particular audience. Features that make Edmodo a complete school app are
Discussion Forum
This feature allows teachers and parents to discuss educational matters, students’ progression, and performance.
File Sharing
Parents can exchange images, videos, and documents with teachers easily with this feature.
Track Progress
Teachers can manage and track the progress of students using the Edmodo app.
Polls, Quizzes, and Assignments
Edmodo also allows teachers to create polls, quizzes, assignments, and award badges for students. It makes the classroom more engaging for students.
Seesaw
This school app offers the perfect platform for student engagement along with the involvement of teachers and parents. The communications are managed and shared by the teachers, which makes the process transparent and trouble-free. The seesaw app supports and translates multiple languages. It removes language barriers and ensure flawless communication. The main features of the Seesaw app are
Activities
Seesaw allows teachers to assign activities to students and monitor their progress. Teachers can easily give various exercises to students using the Activities option. This feature enables students to get more involved inside the classroom. Teachers can give group activities to students to make friends and mingle with others. It will induce a friendly learning atmosphere for the students.
Progress
Teachers can also monitor the progress of the students using the Progress tab. Thus, teachers will know who has completed the assigned tasks. Any classroom can be effectively organized with this application.
Translator
The translator allows parents to communicate in any language they prefer. It also enables them to communicate freely with teachers.
Classpager
The Classpager app is a valuable educational app that promotes effective parent
communication. It is one of the best school apps that encourages parent-teacher relationships, as it allows parents to share texts and files with teachers. The attractive features and easy-to-use interface make this app a perfect school app. Apart from messaging and file sharing, the important features of Classpager are
Reminder
This Reminder feature allows teachers to alert the students about their assignments and exams. This feature ensures that students will not miss the exams. The students will also be able to approach exams with confidence and enthusiasm.
Polls
Teachers can also conduct polls with students to determine future topics or projects. This app values student engagement and participation. The students will also feel proud to vote for their favorites. The poll feature will surely make the classroom more student-friendly. It reduces the gap between teacher-student relationships and makes the learning atmosphere inviting.
D6 Communicator
D6 Communicator is a trending school app that can be used to interact between parents and teachers. This app ensures that the right information is shared with the parents and students at the right time. It has many features like a school calendar, photo gallery, and resources that help maintain strong communication. D6 Communicator can be effectively used as a helpful educational app to create a better learning atmosphere. The features of this educational app for students includes
News
The news section shows the latest school updates and announcements. This feature makes it easy for parents and students to find important schedules and timings.
Calendar
The Calendar section allows teachers to manage the date and timing of various events. In addition, teachers can create schedules for their classes and other activities.
Homework
The Homework section allows teachers to assign homework for students and monitor them. Students can also access this folder and share their responses. It will reduce students’ workload and get more time to talk with teachers and friends.
Classtag
Classtag is a school app for parents that allows them to interact with teachers remotely. Teachers can manage classes and invite students easily using this app. The dashboard enables teachers to create announcements, activities, sign-ups, notes, also more. In addition, Classtag can integrate and operate along with Gmail, Google Classrooms, and Calendar. The main highlights of Classtag are
Messaging
Parents can send messages along with images, videos and files to the teachers easily.
Translator
The translator allows parents to receive and respond to teachers’ messages in any language they prefer.
Announcement
This feature allows teachers to send messages to a group of people like students of a particular grade.
ParentSquare
The ParentSquare app offers an ideal platform for parents and teachers to interact from anywhere. This educational tool offers a constructive platform to interact without much expense. This tool respects user’s privacy and has high-level security. Parents can also involve along with their children to monitor their performance. This versatile app can be used on mobiles, iPads, and tablets. ParentSquare app has plenty of cloud storage that helps you to import and export essential files. It also supports multiple languages along with real-time chat, invoice processing, and electronic payments. The features of this app include,
Messaging
Parents can communicate with teachers with ease using the ParentSquare app. The messages are delivered instantly with notifications.
Classroom management
Teachers can create and manage classrooms using this feature. Students can also join the classes quickly without fail.
Mass notification
Here teachers can send notifications to a group of people. This feature saves time for sending messages individually.
Conclusion
Effective parent communication is a vital factor in a child’s education. It improves the confidence and classroom involvement of children. It also allows parents to know what is happening in the classroom and their child’s progression. There are plenty of school apps that promote healthy parent communication. Carefully understand the features of each apps and choose the best one that suits your needs.
