Stallings in Second: Student Led Conferences

I LOVE STUDENT LED CONFERENCES!

The students get to show off what they have learned and it is a great reflection! Parents can really see how their student is doing and pin point the areas that they need support with.

This year, I came across a teachers blog about making stations for parents. I thought "Wow, I could make student led conferences even more structured!" ;)

So! I bought 4 science fair boards and started collecting student work samples. My goal was to have enough samples to represent each subject. (MATH, SCIENCE/SOCIAL STUDIES, READING, and WRITING)

Every time we did an activity or writing sample that I thought was "Quality work" I would keep it and put it in a big bin. We had our SLC in Jan. so that gave me a few months to collect work.

This is where the fun part happens! I had the students make the boards! I divided my class into 4 groups. I assigned a subject board to each group. Then, I divided the work samples up between those 4 groups depending on what the work sample represented. Math went to math, writing activity went to the writing board, etc.

My instructions to the students:

I want you to look through the work samples in front of you and decide "Which is quality work? Did this student follow all the directions on this particular assignment? Would it impress your parents?"

The students then had to decide as a TEAM on the work sample before raising their hand to tell me the students name. I had all 18 students names up on the board and I put a tally mark next to each student that had a work sample selected to be used on their board. (I obviously had students that had 3-4 work samples selected and I knew the groups needed to select some of the other students that didn't have any selected yet)

In the end, all 18 students had work samples selected and the rest of the work samples were organized by student name to be sent home in PUBLIX paper bags at the SLC.

Writing Station: Writing Goals

The teacher wrote a goal for the student, the student wrote a goal for him/herself, and then the parent wrote a goal for the student. We kept these and put them in our data folders to reflect on each week.

Reading: Bookmarks

I printed bookmarks on card stock then wrote the students names in block letters on one side. I had the students color their bookmark anyway they wanted. At the conference, parents were asked to write an inspirational note to their child that they could read every time they went to read a book!