A new school year is full of opportunity – an opportunity to take what we’ve learned from the previous year and put those lessons into action. This also serves as a clean slate, another chance to build positive relationships with your students and their families. Families and students are likely to be more engaged at the beginning of the year, and Otus can help teachers foster that engagement by setting the precedent and the expectation for consistent communication throughout the year.
Send texts and emails from Otus
Teachers can send texts and emails directly from Otus. All families need to provide is a text-enabled phone number or an email address to receive these messages from their child’s teacher. This is a great way to keep families in the loop about classroom activities like tests, field trips, and other events.
Families can use Otus, too!
Families can view their child’s classroom activities by creating an Otus family account. The family account is easily linked to their student’s account and makes it easy to access areas of Otus of interest to them. Here’s an article on our knowledge base that includes a downloadable PDF students can take home to get their families started.
There are other areas of Otus that families will find helpful, as well.
Class Board: This is where teachers can post announcements about classroom activities and events for their students to see. By linking a family account, families can view the same announcements, eliminating the need to rely on students to bring home the information themselves.
Student Blogs: The blog is where students are encouraged to write about topics related to what they are working on in class. It’s a great way for families to find out what their students are learning each day. Any family member who has asked the question “What did you learn in school today?” and received a less than informative answer will love this feature.
Recognitions: Recognitions are used by teachers to record and take notes of positive and negative behavior they observe in their classroom. For families, this is a great way to see how their student interacts with teachers and their peers each day.
Gradebook: The Otus Gradebook makes it possible for families to track student performance long before the report card comes home. Otus includes a traditional gradebook as well as one built for tracking standards-based growth.
Coming soon: Notifications
We are expanding support for family and student engagement by building a Notification Center. By setting their preferences, families, students, and teachers will be able to select activities that they would like to get alerts for via email, text, or in-app notifications.
We would love to hear from you. What classroom activities would families like to be notified about? Leave a comment below or tweet at us @Otusk12 to let us know what you think.
