First Weeks Check-In
A five-minute form that asks families how it is actually going.
Free. No account, no email, nothing to install.Teachers · Weeks three to four
No email address, no account. Print as many as you need, including for a whole class.
For schools and PTOs
Put your school's name on it
Type a school name and it appears on the sheet. Print a class set or a school set — there is nothing to buy and nothing to attribute.
The name you type stays in this browser. It is not sent to us, not saved, and not recorded anywhere — closing the tab is enough to remove it. In the print dialog, choose Save as PDF to keep a copy.
What the sheet asks
- Since school started, my child has seemed happy to go in the morning — rated one to five.
- Talking about school at home — rated one to five.
- Confident about the work — rated one to five.
- Tired or overwhelmed — rated one to five.
- What’s gone better than you expected?
- What’s worrying you, even a little?
- A box to tick: I’d like to talk — please get in touch.
How to use it
- Send it home once the term has properly started.
- It asks about mornings, talk at home, confidence and tiredness.
- The tick box tells you which families want a conversation.
Three or four weeks in — late enough that a family has formed a view, early enough that anything wrong can still be fixed cheaply. This is the gap where a child who is quietly struggling usually goes unnoticed, because nothing has gone wrong loudly enough to prompt a phone call.
Questions people ask
- Why not just ask at the conference?
- Conferences are usually eight to ten weeks in. A child who has been dreading the mornings since September has had two months of it by then, and the conversation starts from a harder place than it needed to.
- Can I print a class set?
- Yes — a class, a year group or the whole school. Nothing to buy and nothing to attribute.
- What do I do with the ones that tick the talk box?
- Get in touch that week. The tick is the whole point of the sheet, and a family who asked and heard nothing back will not ask again.
- Does it work for older students?
- It was written for K–5, where a parent still sees the mornings. Middle school families often cannot answer the first four honestly, so it works less well.
The thinking behind it
Three Weeks In: Asking Families How It Is Actually Going
Conferences arrive at week eight. A child who has been dreading the mornings since September has had two months of it by then — this asks in week three instead.