We just finished our third nine weeks and student led conferences. The preparations leading up to these conferences are exhausting. Student led conferences are a ton of work on the front end. Year after year, student led conferences are similar. This year, I had 8 school days to prep my learners because of a couple of unexpected snow days. Eight days sounds like a lot of time but this is while our regular routine and learning is going on. In reality, student led conferences are the work of three quarters of work not just eight days of prep.
As I planned student led conferences this year, I thought about the personalities of my group. I made slight changes in accordance. Each child in my class has a data folder where we are tracking their learning based on school wide expectations and grade level interventions. I have used premade pages from on teachers pay teachers. My team selected pages that we thought were important for our students. Most of their data folder has been the result of my work even though as learners, they can track their growth in terms of standards such as letter knowledge, letter sound fluency, sight word fluency, oral counting, and number recognition. It would be a complete different blog post to tell you how I want to do this differently next year based on what I have learned this year.
I decided that their data folders would be where we would keep the work they selected to share with their families since I had decided to not have them move around the room a as they shared writing samples, a good fit book, and math game. My group still struggles with transitions so it was obvious to me to take out components of the student led conferences that would distract their showcase of their work.
In the Fall before parent teacher conferences, we filled out a personal report card. I read each part of it to them and the circled the one that they thought best fit them. I did the writing component at the end after they told me what school made think of. We did the same report card this week. I read it to children who still needed that while others completed independently.
It is fascinating to see how sometimes their answers are exactly the same, other times how they change, and when children are 100% honest even if it is not pretty.
It was rewarding to see them complete the writing component independently and with ease!
It is fun to see their personality come through especially in the writing component. This personal report card can be found at this blog, What the Teacher Wants. Their blog has some great resources for parent teacher conferences as well.
One of the ways I get children on board with helping to get families at school is writing an invitation using interactive writing. We listened to A Letter To Amy by Ezra Jack Keats and talked about different purposes for invitations. Together, we established how we wanted to start our letter after talking about how different children would have different parties visiting that evening. It took us a day or two to get our invitation written. The piece of writing may seem simple but it holds so many components of their growth.
I saw something similar to this reflection of their learning on Pinterest. I adapted it for my class. We worked on this during our writing time one day this week. I knew this could be tough for my class because of their lack of independence so as I thought about ways to help them have success, I knew I had to break the directions up into small pieces. I used my document camera to give one direction at a time. I told them the expectation was a picture and words that matched. Here's where something magical happened, they used their resources without me reminding them. They used words from the paper, words from our word wall, and words from our schedule and around the room without me reminding them. This may seem like less than a big deal, but 120+ days of this reminder and the are finally doing it is glorious for me.
Here is one of my high readers who struggles with writing due to fine motor. I loved that he put he still needed to work on writing. This reflection of learning promoted great discussions for me and the children as well as their families. I had a great moment with a high child when he told me there was nothing he needed help on. I remarked that it was not true. I told him even as an adult there are still things I need help on. He said, "well not me". Yet, he sat there not completing any of the reflection because he told me he needed help with his words. I told him that he should go back and out that he needed help with tricky words in the first box. He was less than happy being the perfectionist that he is. However, here is the important part of student led conferences for me, letting children reflect on their learning and growth and continue to set goals as they meet others. I had 19 different conferences that evening but that is the beauty of the process. Each child is different, emotionally, academically, socially, in all developmental areas. It is powerful when teachers and families embrace that because it is then that we can really help each learner grow. If you are interested in using the template for reflection of my learning, click here.
Does your school conduct student led conferences? What is your favorite part of student led conferences?
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