Parent Teacher Conferences 11/2

I now have been able to see how two different teachers do parent teacher conferences. I can't believe how different they were. They both had many good points that I want to take with me when I have my own classroom. I can see myself mixing what both of my CT’s did and creating a good interactive parent teacher conference.

            My main placement was in Kindergarten, and we had the parent teacher conferences way back on October 9^th. She put all her meetings into two days. She started at ~1ish and finished about ~5ish, she said that really the meetings did not need to be longer than 20mins. I found that this was true. She was able to talk about what she has learned about their child, give them tools to use at home to help out, and then time if they had questions. So the meeting consisted of going over the Kindergarten Assessment for Emergent Stage (AFES). It had 10 different task. It assess the students on uppercase letters, lowercase letters, letters sounds, rhyming, alliteration, beginning letter-sounds identification, kindergarten spelling inventory, kindergarten sight words, CVC words list, and writes their own name (there is not points, but a good way to show how their writing will improve over the year.) During this she gave tips on the different ways the parents could support their children at home. Then she talked about the writing assessment she gave and how she broke them up into different groups, and what she does with them in those groups. Lastly she brought up the math assessment, but told the parents it was not a assessment of what the know, because it is a test of what they have to know by the end of kindergarten. She ends it with please feel free to email or call me if you have any questions or concerns, but also they could set up another at any time.

            My dyad placement is in third grade One thing that this school does which I really liked was they made sure to schedule siblings first. So what they did was one day before school, was had all the teachers meet in the library so they could make sure to have the siblings meetings back to back on the same day.  I thought that this was a really interesting thing to do. They were really thinking about the parents (the days they came to volunteer), so they would not have to come twice to the school. At the meeting was also the specialist teachers, and they were there in case a teacher wanted them to come in and talk, this way they made sure they were not over lapping and time or any parents.

My dyad teachers started out with asking the parents a few questions about their child, how they are doing, if they like school, and how they are doing socially. I thought that this was a good way to start the meeting, because this allowed the parents to bring up anything they wanted the teacher to know about. Then she did the same thing, she went over, reading fluency & comprehension, what they are doing in reading, their math fact (timed quizzes) where they starts and where they are now vs what the standard is, and their writing. She also gave them different ideas about how the parents could support their students at home. Then she ends it with the last question for parents: any questions or concerns that they might have.

            They were both really interesting, and many good points that I am going to take with me and I have my own classroom.