Usually parents nights only give you ten minutes or so to explain your program to the parents. I would put all the informational stuff on your school website or in a letter to give them explaining any important policies in under one minute and then do some CI. Those parents nights can be mind-numbingly boring and ten minutes can feel like an hour to already stressed parents, not to mention the teachers themselves.
I therefore highly recommend just asking the parents to throw out some sports or hobbies they do in their spare time after that first one minute introduction and then do some CWB. In nine minutes you would only be able to circle through three sentences:
- Class, Cassie swims! Write and translate it on the board and circle it, going really slowly and putting your hand on the words. Smile and make it fun!
- Class, WHERE does Cassie swim? Go to the Classroom Rules and smilingly point to rule #3. When you get a cute answer, write it on the board and then go to:
- Class, WITH WHOM does Cassie swim? By then, every time I’ve done this anyway, the parents have forgotten they are in a school and are laughing and having a good time.
Just don’t waste those nine minutes. You can’t get them back after the ten minutes are up. It won’t fail – the odds are highly in your favor – because the “where” and the “with whom” questions are awesome as long as you are pointing to rule #3 when you ask them and reject any boring ass answers. And all you have to do is revert back to talking about the other stuff. It’s fun to see the parents happy and they won’t remember any of the other stuff anyway – except for that one parent with a notepad who only wants to know about homework and doesn’t really care if her child learns as long as she gets an A.