Thanks Reg for this informational post….

Thanks Reg for this informational post. That’s interesting the connection between Club Penguin and Fresh Grade. I have been using Fresh Grade for about 4 years. The first few years I used it in a private school setting where each teacher had to have either fresh grade or an online website to communicate with parents. I found setting up Fresh Grade easy. An added feature that I love about Fresh Grade is that when I post announcements or to a portfolio I can see which parents have viewed it. For example, I had a parent always demanding I send home extra work for her child to do, however, I could see she was not involved or engaged at all within her child’s education as she never viewed any of the announcements and rarely viewed or commented on anything posted in her profile. She was essentially wanting work to keep her child busy and out of her hair, that was an interesting conversation to have.
My current school district has Fresh Grade set up district wide. So there is no work on the teachers end to create accounts as its all provided for us and has our class uploaded. This relationship between our district and Fresh Grade has made it even more popular in our area and almost every class in my school uses it. I’m teaching Kindergarten this year and find it as an essential tool to help parents have conversations with their children about what is happening in our classroom. In the past, I had done a monthly newsletter and have replaced that with weekly announcements and I try to post to each child’s portfolio once a week if not more.