Embedded Best Practices
Many teachers and school staff don’t have background or training in family engagement and they find connecting with families intimidating at times. To make learning and capacity-building easy and streamlined, TalkingPoints embeds research-based family engagement expertise and best practices within the platform. Through everyday activities, our platform helps scale best practices and build family and staff capacity for positive relationship-building and collaboration.
Make Each Message Better
- Built-in AI-supported guidance helps teachers and staff easily improve their messages with just a click of a button
- Craft a message from scratch by sharing a prompt and Message Mentor will write a best-practice message on the spot
- Quickly fix spelling and grammar errors
- Staff remain in control of their messaging with families since they can use, edit, or discard Message Mentor suggestions
The Power of the Positive
Research shows that a 4:1 ratio of positive to constructive messages builds trust, strengthening family-teacher partnerships, making it easier to partner with families when challenges arise. TalkingPoints helps teachers share positive feedback with just a few clicks!
- Quick kudos makes it simple for teachers to highlight student successes and share a fun, encouraging emoji with families
- Positive message tracking provides a simple view of positive outreach so teachers can see who they’ve celebrated—and who may need a little extra affirmation
- AI-assisted tagging automatically identifies positive messages, categorizes them, and surfaces patterns to help teachers understand and improve their communication habits
- Family check-ins help teachers stay connected year-round with pre-built messages aligned with key school calendar moments that help keep families engaged in what’s happening at school
Built-in Coaching & Best Practices—No PD Required
Help build staff family engagement “muscle” while making their job a little easier!
- Built-in capacity development tool surfaces weekly best practice tips for staff
- Research-backed reminders and suggestions help encourage appropriate levels of family engagement
- Best practice translated message templates let staff easily put the tip into practice
Engaging Families to Extend Learning at Home
Designed to help families easily support classroom learning.
- Home learning activities allow teachers to quickly share research-based activities that families can do at home to reinforce what’s happening in the classroom
- No teacher prep required – simply select a grade level and topic (K-6), and TalkingPoints will create an easy-to-use home activity
Improve Attendance
Reducing chronic absenteeism is a critical challenge for schools and districts. TalkingPoints Attendance Improvement Plus is an attendance solution that has been shown to reduce chronic absenteeism. It is based on best practices for improving attendance and building a positive attendance culture. It includes:
Attendance Message Series
- Ready-to-send, positive, research-based messages
- Maintain consistent grade-level appropriate communication about why attendance matters and how to support it at home
Smarter, Targeted Messaging
- Using a multi-tiered, MTSS-aligned approach helps you to reach at-risk students earlier and partner with families to address attendance challenges before they become chronic
Daily Absence Reporting
- Remove language and access barriers to make it easy for families to share absence reasons in their home language
- Using a two-way, text-based format helps get quicker responses and address root causes
Time-Saving Templates to Engage Families
- Time saving, pre-built library of pre-translated, research-based message templates
- Flexible, turnkey way to expand best practice messaging with families
- Template library covers key themes including attendance, well-being, and positive, asset-based messaging
- Staff can create, save, and share custom templates to guide consistent messaging within schools or the district
