Student-led Conferences

Communicating with parents has always been one of the most important aspects of my teaching. I wrote a post about it some time back. This year was my first time to facilitate student-led conferences and, boy, were they an incredible learning experience. 

A student-led conference is basically the student inviting their parents to the class to share in the learning journey. As it was my first time to hold student-led conferences, I contacted my old mentor from my first year of teaching, Helen Teese. She explained the process to me and also how she has been organising the PYP Exhibition with her class for the past six years. 

I took what I learned from Helen and brought it to my class and then asked them how they would like the conferences to go. My students are particularly sharp and immediately decided what they wanted their parents to see. After a short lesson on social skills, the students decided they would meet their parents at the door and bring them through four stations. We decided we could schedule four groups at the same time.

1. The first station was student portfolios. These portfolios contain samples of student work throughout the year. Some of the pieces are selected by students and some by teachers. We decided that we would show our parents some of our recent Mathematics understanding in our portfolios at this station.

2. After this, parents were escorted to two chairs facing the Smartboard and our current inquiry cycle. In the PYP, there are six units of inquiry and we teach using different versions of the inquiry cycle. The students actually walked through the different parts of the inquiry cycle, explaining the research process to their parents. 

Student Explaining the Inquiry Cycle

After this, the student immediately went over to the Smartboard, opened their most recent UOI summative assessment and went through it. For this particular unit, we decided upon a form or presentation. Students were given a choice of a poster, PowerPoint, Scratch animation or anything else that covered the criteria.

Action - Teaching Others what we Learned

3. The next station was the Literacy station. In our class, we like to write books collaboratively and then either print them or make them into digital stories to share online. Have a look at one book we made here. This is an excellent way to teach both the reading and writing components of the Literacy scope and sequence as well as the transdisciplinary skills. I had planned to have a laptop set up so the students would just show the video but, due to technical difficulties, we had to change plans and read the stories. The students also highlighted the scope and sequence outcomes we had been working on while creating the books.

Reading and Displaying Literacy Skills

4. The final station was a reflection station for the parents. They were asked what they liked best about their child's work. Some of the students were over the moon with the positive responses from their parents. Parents were also asked how we could improve the conferences for next year. This feedback was then analysed by the class. The teacher then emailed or had the office staff call the parents to address their ideas. One parent said he would like to come into the class ore often. He was called by the office and welcomed to make an appointment to come in anytime he would like. It is very important to follow up with parent requests if you want to really develop the culture of your school!

Finally, clearly labeled displays like the one below were on the walls for parents to see what the students were learning. 

Previous UOI Display in Waiting Area

This is probably one of the best ways of reporting that I have ever learned!