What type of conferences do you have with your students’ families? After doing traditional parent-teacher meetings for several years, our upper elementary team changed to student-parent – teacher conferences. Not only are students present to discuss their strengths and challenges, they play a leadership role in the meeting. Sharing with parents each child’s progress of course took quite a bit of preparation, so students and teachers alike started reflecting on each individual’s progress well ahead of conference time.

A couple weeks prior to the planned conferences we began doing prep work with the children in class. Because the children would be participating in conferences, it made sense for them to start thinking about their progress thus far. This first step included a written self-assessment done by each child. While this idea seemed daunting at first, it was broken down into many steps so as to not be overwhelming. There were two separate evaluation forms – one for academics and one for behavior. On the academic sheet, each child reflected on what they were doing well in math, reading, writing, language, history, spelling, handwriting, and cultural studies (history and science), as well as what challenges they were having in each of these subjects. The behavioral form prompted the children to think about their work habits, as well as how they treated others in the classroom community.

We brainstormed examples of what they might write in each area as a whole group. Phrases such as “can do long division with 3-digit divisors, can complete 100 multiplication math facts in under 3 minutes, picks challenging books for independent reading,” were given as examples. Then we gave the students about 30 minutes to begin working on their individual reflections. We had the children work on these to complete them over the course of several days.

“My strengths” page of the self- assessment. Click image to download an editable copy of this form.

Behavioral portion of the self-assessment. Click image to download an editable copy of this form.

Once the children had completed their self-assessments, then it was time for teachers to add their input to the forms, so that both student and teacher perspectives could be shared with parents during the meetings.

Needless to say, this is a big project, but also a good exercise for students in self-reflection – a valuable practical life skill. Additionally, the information on these forms essentially drives the meetings, giving children a script, if need be, of what they can share about their progress in the conference.

Next time, I’ll share how we chose and presented work samples to parents during these conferences. And if you’re interested, feel free to use the self-assessment form for your own class!