Parent Teacher Conference time is quickly approaching in most schools, but don’t stress out! Conferences do not need to make you want to pull your hair out… I’m going to share 3 tips with you to help make conferences run smoothly and I also have a FREEBIE for you!
Tip #1 – Provide student work samples
It’s important to show parents student work samples so they can get an idea of what their child is doing in class. It’s also important when reviewing the work samples with parents to highlight strengths, but also point out areas for growth. For example, Jenny does a great job staying focused on her ideas and adding details to her story. One thing I’d like her to continue to work on is making sure her sentences are full and complete (not run-on sentences). Having examples to back up your strengths and areas for improvement is extremely helpful.
Tip #2 – Provide suggestions for how to help at home
Parents are often not educators. They want to help their children, but aren’t always sure what to do. In my conference notes, I always have a next steps section. Some of these next steps are things that will happen in the classroom, but some can also be suggestions for home. For example, ask Jenny a few comprehension questions each night after she finishes her 30 minutes of nightly reading.
Tip #3 – Provide resources for Parent/Teacher Conferences
Tip 3 goes along with tip 2. Parents want to help, but might not feel comfortable since they are not teachers themselves. Provide parents with resources to help their kids at home. This could be sharing photos of math anchor charts so parents can help students with tricky math concepts. You could provide parents with a page of specific comprehension questions to ask their child when they finish reading. If we give parents the tools, the parent-home connection is likely to be even more successful.
Parent/Teacher Conference FREEBIE
To help make your planning even easier I have this simple, FREE parent/teacher conference page you can use! You can type your comments digitally (I often use bullet points) or print and write your feedback out. Parents can then take this form with them when they leave so they have a reminder of what was discussed and ways they can help their kids at home. Grab this FREEBIE >>> HERE.
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