Make parent-teacher conferences easier for everyone by preparing to show student grades and work, setting parents at ease, listening to them, and remaining positive.
1. Be Prepared
If your school stores student grades digitally, bring a laptop or tablet that can allow parents to see grades. Some parents don't check their child's grades on a regular basis and might want to see the most recent update of the gradebook. These moments can always be good jumping-off points to a conversation. Explaining an assignment or two and how their child performed could be a good way to show the parents what their son or daughter is doing each day. It can be helpful for the parents to see the assignments and get a better understanding of what the expectations are for your class.
For younger students, bring in some examples of student work so that parents can see what their child has created. It's a great idea to have these examples posted somewhere in the classroom or waiting for them on the students' desks. This allows the parents some time to see the room and the learning spaces that you have created for the students. Consider letting the parents take the student creations home. It always reflects well on you when you can show them the work their child does in classroom and send them home with a nice souvenir.
2. The 2-for-1 Approach
There will be times when you'll need to have to have conversations with parents about certain behaviors or attitudes that are cause for concern. Instead of talking solely about the issues that student is having in class, come up with a couple of positive things to say for every issue that needs to be addressed. Often, the parents already know that things haven't been going smoothly, so hearing about some of the nice things can put them at ease and make them a bit more understanding when it comes to addressing those behaviors or attitudes. Make sure these positive stories are personal -- and do not undersell them. Every student has good qualities that should be highlighted, and it's important to share those with parents who don't want to hear only about the problems.
3. Just Listen
One of the things I've learned over the years is that some parents want to be listened to. They want to share some of their own stories about the child they have in your class, and those stories can be very important in understanding the student more deeply. Taking the time to really hear parents can help create a better school-to-home connection that can help later in the year if further contact is needed to address other issues. Listening is such a valuable skill, and the parent/teacher conference can be stressful for the parents as well, so being receptive to their stories can help everyone feel better by the end of the night.
4. Put out the Welcome Mat
This one has been big for me. It's so important to create space for students to feel comfortable in your classroom, and the same is true for parents during these conferences. Bring in some chairs to replace the student desks. Make sure that the desk or table you're using for the conferences is clear of clutter. Leave out some candy for parents to munch on while you talk about their child. Make sure that the room is clean and that tables have been wiped down. All of these little details can make a big difference in how the conversation might go. Parents are coming onto your turf, and you want them to feel comfortable. By taking some time to create a welcoming environment for these meetings, you'll find that parents will feel a lot more comfortable.
Every parent-teacher conference is different, but these tips can help make the event better. If you're a teacher with some great tips on how to make this a wonderful time for everyone, please share. Are you a parent with some great tips for teachers? Leave them in the comments section so that teachers can use them for their next parent conference.
Truly collaborative group work is complex and messy, so we have a few tips and tools to get students working interdependently.
Research supports what we probably already knew about student collaboration: It’s integral to learning. We know that collaboration helps students build their interpersonal and social and emotional skills. We know that students don’t learn facts in a vacuum; social learning helps them build a more meaningful understanding of the world.
Everyone loves collaboration. But simply bring up group work and... that’s a different conversation. Group work is one of the most common types of student collaboration. It’s also complicated and messy, and never quite works out as well as we’d like. Some students feel like they’re doing most of the work. Others feel left out. Motivation wanes. Assignments get cobbled together, and nobody feels like they have real ownership of the work.
Or worse yet: Nobody feels a strong sense of ownership of the learning.
Collaborative group work is complex and messy by nature—it’s supposed to be that way. Working through that complexity is part of what we want students to experience. But if we really want to promote and model positive collaboration, it’s worth taking a second look at how we structure and assign group work to our students.
PRACTICAL TIPS
If you’re designing an activity, lesson, or unit that involves collaborative group work, here are a few ideas to consider.
1. Ask yourself: Does this assignment actually need to involve group work? Can the tasks be broken down into meaningful, equitable parts? Before anything else, decide exactly what you want students to learn and make sure it’s suited to group collaboration. If the work doesn’t break down easily (and equitably), maybe it’s worth considering a different route.
2. Break down the work for students ahead of time. Effective group work takes a lot of scaffolding. Don’t expect students to know how to divvy up the work on their own. Working together to break down and delegate responsibilities is one of the most challenging tasks for any group, even for adults. Breaking down tasks ahead of time models for students how it can be done. Over time, consider transferring some of this responsibility to them.
Make sure the distribution of work—what each student’s roles and responsibilities will be—is very clear to everyone. Do your best to create tasks that are interdependent—the kind that require kids to work both independently and together.
3. Give students a framework to understand their roles and responsibilities. Traditional group work roles (think: timekeeper or note taker) tend to be administrative. While that division is well-intentioned, the roles don’t (usually) serve our learning goals directly and fall short of supporting true collaboration.
What if we structured the roles differently? When students share ownership of what they’re learning, everyone should have multiple roles to play: one task to own individually; a role in supporting a peer; and the responsibility to assess both themselves and someone else in their group. Interdependence is key. You can check out
this graphic organizer for an example of how this might look in a group of four students.
The work of collaborating in groups can be difficult to coordinate and challenging to complete. But it’s also a great opportunity to practice communication and collaboration skills. Visual brainstorming tools, such as mind maps and virtual corkboards, can help students get organized and comfortable sharing their ideas.
Using a digital tool can be a big help. The three online tools below are specifically for group brainstorming. Kids can add text, videos, and images at any time (remotely or during class). And by organizing group work visually, students will develop valuable presentation skills while working creatively as a part of their team.
Mural: Designed for multiple users to share ideas, Mural allows kids to work together on projects in class or remotely. Students can watch their boards grow as group members add text, videos, and images. In addition, they can move and revise items during the brainstorming process as if they were moving Post-it notes around. The paid version allows teachers to create secure rooms, or folders, to house mural boards and control sharing.
MindMeister: Great for older kids, this mind-mapping website has a simple interface with extensive sharing functionality. Students can browse through premade templates or build their own map by choosing a main theme and building out nodes with notes, images, attachments, and links. Bonus: Any node can contain team assignments, due dates, and email reminders, so groups can easily visualize and organize their interdependent responsibilities.
Stormboard: Students create and add “stickies” to a virtual whiteboard where group members (or a whole class) can comment and vote. These stickies can be text, images, or videos, and users can color-code and rearrange them on the board to easily organize ideas as they brainstorm.
No comments:
Post a Comment