Reimagine conferences
After conferences are finished, take time to reimagine how to improve them in the future.
Make interesting conferences
There are many different types of conferences that you may have with parents today. Besides the traditional face-to-face versus virtual environments, you might want to think of other ways to demonstrate the knowledge of the child to their family.
Reimagine parent-teacher conferences
- Student led parent-teacher conferences allow the student to demonstrate knowledge and learning processes to their family through a growth portfolio. One way to do this in a virtual space OneNote Notebook. Students may also use PowerPoint to present their story to parents. When using this process, student voice is inserted into goal planning giving the student agency and ownership over the goals created.
- Academic parent-teacher teams are student goal-orientation meetings that allow the student to directly discuss their learning process, then ask for support from administrators, teachers, and parents to gain deeper buy-in from the student and all stakeholders.
- Demonstration meetings have teachers set up stations in the classroom for students to lead families through various learning experiences from the term. Recreating science experiments, partner reading a story, or playing a math game with family members gives a sense for how students learn in their classroom. Some teachers create scavenger hunt style activities where the final destination is the teacher’s desk. Remember, if doing this type of conference, make sure to have a quiet and private place to discuss student learning.