DES MOINES, Iowa –It’s hard to know what your kids do at school all day. Teachers at one school are doing something new to get the conversation started. Every teacher at Wright Elementary in Des Moines has a twitter handle this year.

Teacher Courtney Jensen says, “I am @jensenfab5th, so we’re the fab 5th Graders here.” More than 20 teachers are using the social media site to positively promote the school and share what the students are doing throughout the day. Jensen says, “To show families what they’re doing, we can jump on twitter or be sending pictures of them up performing a drama piece or a tableaux or doing a readers theater.”

The goal is for teachers to tweet two to three times a week with messages 140 characters or less. Principal Lindsey Cornwell says, “We’re kind of going to our parents with that and sharing school information the way they’re getting other information, like the news or just social life in general.”

Cornwell says the twitter initiative is part of the school’s improvement plan. She says, “We can use the data twitter sends us. Just last week we had over 1,500 views.” She goes on to say, “So, we can follow that data and track that just as we would our student achievement goals.”

You can follow the school @wrightdmps on Twitter.