Establishing an open line of communication with parents is essential for teachers. The printable Daily Behavior Communication Notebook makes it easy.
Like many teachers, there was not a lot of emphasis placed on how to establish communication with families during my teacher training. So, going into the classroom, it was a lot of trial and error.
I knew I needed an effective way to communicate with my students’ parents, but I also knew it couldn’t take me forever to record the information to send home.
I tried writing notes (too time-consuming), doing elaborate sticker charts (too expensive), and making nightly phone calls backed up by notes I had written throughout the day (way too time-consuming!).
After a lot of experimenting with methods, I decided to try a simple daily behavior chart that, while personalized for each student, was exceptionally easy to complete. And by easy, I mean it took me no time to record the information, and it provided families with a full picture of the student’s day.
The Daily Behavior Communication Notebook
While some students need daily behavior logs for their IEPs, other students need them because behavior is something that they’re struggling with at the moment. The Daily Behavior Communication Notebook that I created is versatile enough to collect the data needed for behavior goals and flexible enough to be used with any student at any time.
The best part? It doesn’t take a lot of time to track multiple students’ behavior at once.
What’s In the Daily Behavior Communication Notebook?
When I created the behavior notebook, I knew that I would be using it with various students across multiple grade levels. That meant that I needed to create different formats for each child. So, when I put together this resource so that other teachers could use it too, I made sure that everything was included.
There are six different versions of the Daily Behavior form, and you can edit the text on the form to fit your needs. Some have tracking for each class, and others are broken down into broader time frames, like morning and afternoon.
But, like I said – all of the versions are editable. That means you can change the wording for classes and assign different behavior values for each emoji face on the page. I have set the following values already, but you can edit them to fit your specific classroom or individual students:
- Big Smile – Absolutely wonderful day!
- Smile – Expected behavior displayed; good day!
- Mediocre – Needed reminders to stay on task; okay day.
- Sick – Tired or not feeling well.
- Sad – Uncooperative and off task.
- Sad with Tear – Received consequence for inappropriate behavior.
I have also included 12 different black and white covers for the Daily Behavior Communication Notebooks so that your students can personalize the front.
I like to print the covers on colored Astrobrights cardstock to match the color coding in my classroom. You can read more about color coding here.
How to Use the Daily Behavior Communication Notebook
If I’m using the pages as stand-alone pages, I like to keep them on a clipboard. You can place them in alphabetical order, by seating arrangement, or however works best for you. At the end of each class or time period, I quickly flip through the charts and circle the appropriate emoji based on the child’s behavior.
If I am using the pages as a notebook (my preferred method), I quickly run through a page each day, recording the student’s behavior throughout the day. Sometimes I quickly record the behavior after each class, but some days I complete it all at the end of the day. It depends on what works best for you and the time you have available.
Here’s a look of how I incorporate the communication log with the communication stickers:
Students can then take their notebooks home to be initialed or signed and return them the next day.
I have found that parents appreciate the daily feedback on their child’s behavior, and by keeping it in a notebook format, we can see the progress throughout the month or quarter. That visual can be very motivating for students and their parents!
How do I prep the communication logs?
I print two pages to one piece of paper, so each page is half a sheet of paper. Not only does this save paper, but it is more compact for making it to and from school each day.
I print the cover at half-sheet size too, on colored cardstock.
I print the daily pages front/back, again to save paper – but also because it helps keep the size of the notebook from being too thick.
At the beginning of the school year, I create one of these for each of my students… for each marking period. Because I’m already making copies of the daily page and already printing the covers, it saves me time in the long run throughout the school year. At the start of each new marking period, I can swap out the previous one for a new one.
I save all communication notebooks for that year in the filing cabinet. Nothing super fancy. I save them for documentation.
Or you can watch this video:
What Other Teachers Are Saying About the Daily Behavior Communication Notebook
While I love the notebook, and it works great for my students, I think it’s also important to see how it works for other teachers.
Here are some of the reviews (there are over 900!) and insight into how the Daily Behavior Communication Notebook works for others.
“We do an overall “How was our day?” in my self-contained classroom. We do a Morning Block and an Afternoon Block. We laminated the 2 subject page and placed in communication folders to go home daily. We color in the appropriate emoji for the child’s day with a dry erase marker and place sticky notes for any comments. IT’S AWESOME!”
“This has become my new go to for behavior tracking. I love the visual feedback it gives to my students. The explanations at the top are very helpful when helping students learn to monitor their own behaviors.”
“I needed to modify my behavior chart for more challenging students. This allowed me to modify for each different child and situation.”
“We have used this a couple times so far in class and my students got so intrigued to see what face they would get for each subject at the end of the day! It is a great and easy behavior management tool that is also fun and not too harsh on the student. Thank you for this sweet tool.”
“I LOVE LOVE LOVE this resource! Students were very receptive of and honest when it came to having to monitor their behavior after each class! It was great for some many different ages and grade levels. They loved the emojis. Definitely recommend!”
No matter how you use the Daily Behavior Communication Notebook, remind students that it’s a tracking tool to help them improve. By presenting it positively, students and families will be much more receptive to the daily communication.
