There are 4 C's that we need to implement in our classrooms to foster a growth mindset; collaboration, creativity, critical thinking, and communication. I will be focusing in the last of these 4, communication.
In today's day, communication is happening constantly through social media, cell phones, face-to-face interactions, and many other outlets of communicating with members of all types of communities. As teachers, we need to teach our students how to communicate effectively with those around them to ensure they will be as successful as possible. In order to do this, we must incorporate communication with peers through group projects or formative assessment tools like think-pair-share. Another way to instill this in our students is to set up effective communication devices with the parents of our students.
There are countless apps and websites available for free to teachers to use in their classroom to promote communicating with peers. One of these websites is Padlet. Padlet allows students to share ideas of their take on a certain topic while reading how their peers interpreted the same information. It is a great way for students to communicate and collaborate with one another and bounce ideas off each other.
One of the most important aspects of being a teacher is creating positive relationships with the parents of your students. As many teachers experience, papers that are sent home with students to "give to their parents" end up crumpled up in the bottom of the students' book bags. To ensure that you are communicating with parents, take away that aspect of the paper traveling through hands to get to the parents and communicate through apps! One app that is incredibly useful for this type of activity is Remind. Remind allows people to join a "class" and depending on the grade level you are teaching, both students and parents could be part of this. The teacher can send out mass messages to all parents/students and the parents can ask questions right back to the teacher through the app. Think of it as a mass group message without having the issues of different style phones. Remind is available for both iPhones and Androids. There is also a website version for those that prefer to use the computer as opposed to mobile devices!
Showing our students how we communicate effectively with their parents will encourage them communicate with their peers as well as their parents. This communication directly with parents can also foster communication in the home between the students and their parents. When the student gets home from school, the parent almost always asks, "What did you do in school today?" Instead of the student saying, "Nothing" and walking away, the parent can have access to different fun projects the teacher shared pictures of with them. The parents know what happened in the school day and can ask their child about something fun that happened, and the child is much more likely to walk to talk about the fun project they did!
If you want to check out other communication apps for parents and educators, this link will take you to a great article!