Student Led Conference VS. Parent Teacher Conferences.
Have you ever heard of Student Led Conferences? Well, they are fantastic! The students take ownership of their learning, behavior and goals. It takes some time to prep, but it is soooo worth it! My experience comes from an EL (formerly Expeditionary Learning) school where Student Led Conferences are an extremely important part of education. One of the focuses at EL schools is that Student Take Charge of their Own Learning (YES, even at young ages)! I taught a 1st/2nd split and their conferences blew me away!
So what are SLC’s anyway? Students present their learning and self-reflection on their academics, character & behavior. They discuss their learning, reflections and goals with their grown-up. SLC’s are run different in each class, but with my littles I figured out how to help them articulate their learning & reflection to their grown-up. Then, they would make goals with the help of their grown up. They presented their learning without me there. (I would listen to the 2 or 3 conferences happening at the same-ish time in the background), then after they had made goals with their family I would come over. They would share their goals with me and I would write them down, giving my guidance on those goals as well. We would check in with these goals when we graphed together in their data folder.
Student Led Conferences are a time to reflect and celebrate! They are not a time to bring up major issues. The kids will bring up their issues on their own most of the time. This is time for kids to be proud of what they have accomplished! They choose the work they want to share!
How are Students Able to Articulate all of their Learning, Reflections & Goals? Well, it takes:
- Explicit teaching & modeling
- Clear Structures and order
- Practice & Critique
Let’s get into it! I have tweaked and created materials to run SLC’s with my 1st and 2nd graders, so here is what I did.
1. Explicit teaching and modeling. To prepare for SLC’s I would teach what they were and the importance of why we did them. I showed them the reflection sheet that they would fill out for each artifact (I’ll get to this later). I took exemplar videos of previous conferences in my own class and shared the kindergarten SLC from the EL website with my students so that they could actually see and hear what the conferences were like. Later on, we would do 1-3Fish Bowls (1 student models for the rest to see). The very first conference, I would be the fish to start. Others would volunteer.
2. Clear Structures & Order. There were a few key elements in our conferences: 1. the Data Folder that I created, 2. The artifact reflection sheets that I made, 3. a poster with our conference outline that we made as a class.
The DATA FOLDER is a compilation of data that the kids either track by themselves (eventually) or with me. It always includes them coloring their graphs, words, etc. They take charge of their data and make mini-goals. My class does not have data to just “have data”, it has to mean something. The data folder has more than academics like math, reading, writing & sight words, but it also has habits of character and behavior. These habits are a pillar in EL education. I created my own habits tracker with emojis for my kids. Here are some pictures of my data folder resource.
3. Practice & Critique. As with anything that you want to present, there needs to be time to practice, critique and practice some more until you feel confident. With my littles it looked liked starting with step 1 above, then we would practice with our class beanie babies, puppets and stuffed animals. My students would present to their “fluffy friend” so that they could practice speaking and going through their conference.
Next, they would present with a buddy from our class. Like I mentioned, I had both 1st and 2nd graders. My 2nd graders were with me last year, so I matched them with a 1st grader (see my peanut butter jelly partners in my Building Classroom Community Resource or read about in this blog post). The 2nd grader would practice first, then the 1st graders. Our critique sounded like: “I really liked specific part“, “You could try specific advice“, “You did a good job specific detail“. You should note that to teach critique also takes explicit instructions with written sentence structures and practice. You can use helpful critiques in all areas like writing, math, reading, art, etc. so it is worth the time to teach.
Finally, they would practice with their middle school buddy. We had older buddies come 1-2 times per month to read, play, etc. for about 15 minutes in the morning. The middle school buddies were instructed to critique as well, but I found that some of them felt uncomfortable giving advice to my littles.
At this point many kids are excited and proud to share the work that they chose to present! Some of course, were still a bit apprehensive, but for the most part the buzz in the air was excited.
You might wonder about how they chose their work…
How my students chose their portfolio pieces
My structure for letting the kids choose their work was pretty simple. They chose their reading response from their journal, their published writing piece (from writer’s workshop), a cummulative math test, 2 artifacts from our learning expeditions, anything else that their little hearts were proud of. That’s it! Simple, yet making a big impact!
In my resource, you will see the artifact reflection sheets that they filled out for each piece they were presenting. I color coded these for all of our benefit. For example, green sheets would go with their green reading journal. I could easily have the kids check to make sure they had all of their reflections. The kids used their best handwriting and complete sentences to present their best work. If these were not met, then they would fix their mistakes until it was their best! To differentiate for my few that were not writing yet, I used a highlighter to write sentences that they dictated to me. They would then trace to complete their artifact reflections.
Presenting Student Led Conferences
At last the big event is here! I have 1-2 scheduled at a time, but some of my conferences overlap, so I can have up to 4 going at once. Sound stressful? It’s really not because the kids are prepped and are sharing their learning with their families who love them most. Like I mentioned earlier, it’s a time to celebrate and make goals. It’s a very positive experience for most! Everyone is proud! If there are concerns outside of their goals, then we meet at another time. I save their work in their portfolio and celebrate with them the following day!
I hope this post empowers you to do Student Led Conferences in your classroom!
Are you already doing SLC’s? I hope my ideas are helpful to you and I would love to hear your ideas & suggestions below!
