Rockin' the Student-Led Family Conferences

If you don't do student-led conferences, you absolutely need to start. This is my first year with this style of conferencing, and I will never go back to traditional conferences. 

Admittedly, it is initially several hours of work to create the "stations" at which the students interact with their parents to show their learning, but once done, they can be reused year after year with only simple updates needed. Here's what mine look like.

 Here are the basics of how student-led conferences work at my school:

1. Two to three families are scheduled in a one-hour block.

2. Teacher meets with one family while the other families are visiting the stations throughout the room.

    I do 6 stations:

Math, Number Corner, Social Studies/Science, Writing Workshop, Reading Workshop, and Technology

3. Each station has a paper that explains the focus of that subject, a task for the student, and questions for the parent to ask their child. The reading, writing, and math station also have a display board with a sample of grade-level work, learning progression, and other important information.

4. Students fill out a paper which keeps track of the stations they have visited and allows parents to comment or question.

5. After teacher completes conference with one family, that family goes back to the stations, and another family is called over.

My school has fall and spring conferences, so I just changed out what I needed to reflect current topics.

Here they are by subject.

Reading Workshop:
We completed a unit on Information Writing and are half way through an Argument and Advocacy unit.

Writing Workshop:

Grade-level sample of Information writing and the Information writing checklist.

Math:

The Eight Mathematical Practices

Number Corner:

Science/Social Studies:

Technology:

Student-led conferences are an opportunity for students to be empowered as experts of their learning and share that with their parents.