Purpose and roles
- Celebrating student learning and placing student learning first.
- Ensuring that all students can articulate and advocate their learning with confidence and purpose.
- Students and parents explore together what has been learned and how learning happens when their child is at school.
- Provides a window to the parents to understand better their child’s learning and how the PYP and inquiry look like in practice.
- Specialists help students to choose an evidence of student learning in their subject of which the students can discuss with confidence and purpose.
- Student's role is to be prepared for their conferences and build their confidence.
- Classroom teacher’s role is to facilitate and provide a structure for the conferences that is in line with the school's philosophy and practice.
- Parent’s role is to support their child while they are sharing their learning.
Timeline
1. The Student-led Conference parent letter will go home by Thursday, April 6th. It is inclusive of the signup form that should be returned to classroom teachers by Tuesday, April 11th.
2. Once the sign-up forms are collected in full, classroom teachers are to coordinate by email with other classroom teachers about conference times for those with siblings.
3. Teachers are to send home the Student-led Conference Confirmation Letter before April 19th.
4. Single subject teachers are asked to get student work in the portfolios by Friday, April 21st (one week before conferences) so that students can practice.
What happens in the classrooms
- Up to 5 families are coming to the classroom for the pre-booked time slot
- Conferences are organized around 5 or more stations, or around an agenda created by the students (e.g. grade 4)
- Stations include: e.g. games relevant to student learning, math, language, UoI, and Portfolio
- Students have practiced their conference and will lead the one-hour-session from station to station or along the agenda points
- Teachers are not actively participating the conference
- The teacher will intervene and guide the process should the conference take an unexpected turn and become a negative experience for the child.
Letter going home
An invitation letter goes home addressing the following:
- Structure(s) and time of the conference
- Explaining the purpose and parent role
- Providing sample questions and how to provide effective feedback
- Portfolios can be taken home after the conference and to be returned to school after the long weekend.
