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Each week, Education World's "Best (Teaching) Idea Ever" feature highlights a favorite teacher-tested idea designed to help you teach a lesson, manage a classroom, communicate with parents, impress colleagues and administrators…and amaze them all with your energy and creativity! Included: A chance to share your best idea ever

Sometime during the first few days of each school year, Kelly Anderson announces to her seventh and eighth grade language arts students that they don't have homework that night -- their parents do. Anderson then gives each student a piece of paper on which is written:

Dazzling Dawg Request:
In 1,000,000 words or fewer, please tell us about your child.

Anderson asks her students to return the assignment by the end of the week. What she learns about her students from that one assignment, Anderson says, has a positive effect on her relations with them and with their parents throughout the year.

Read more about the "In a Million Words..." idea in the following Education World articles:
In a Million Words or Fewer...
Making Parents Part of the "In"-volved Crowd

Submitted by: Kelly Anderson, Raymond B. Stewart Middle School, Zephyrhills, Florida.

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