Parent Teacher Conference are always SO much work, right?! You spend so much time preparing for 15 quick minutes. I hope to give you some quick tips below to make your night a success!
My school has PT conferences the week before Columbus Day in October. Considering that we start in August, that is pretty early in the school year! We do not have a report card to hand out, but I want to make sure that my parents walk away with something. To prepare, I always fill out the sheet below for each of my students. I have the bullets as talking points and share evidence that supports them as we go along. I also put together a packet of things to work on the areas that are not checked so that they have some idea of what they can do to help their child.
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| Click the page to download! |
After preparing the page, I put the evidence in the order that I am going to talk in and paper clip it together. I find that is much easier that shuffling through a file folder. I then put my file folders in conference order so that I can easily find each child’s materials.
I am lucky in that my school does all the scheduling for me through the website My Conference Time. I know the service isn’t free, but there are other similar ones out there.
Before the night begins, I put a sign outside my door with each child’s conference time and make sure it says something about knocking at their conference time. I find a knock at the door helps to speed things along if they go long!
I also leave out my 1:1 iPad cart so that my parents can take a peek into their child’s iPad and leave a special picture and note for them. You could do something similar even if you do not have a full set of iPads. Before I had iPads I left out class books so that the parents could see books we had been creating.
Last but not least, it’s conference time! I try to ask parents about huge questions right away just so that I know we have time to answer what is weighing heavy on their minds. Sometimes I even send out an email asking them for these questions in advance. I want to close each conference on a positive note, so I ask parents to leave a little note for their children. I won these cute cut out shoes from a blogger meet up I was at which made a perfect door for this year. You can also download a freebie at my TpT store here to set a door up in a rockstar theme!
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I hope that I have given you some good tips for your next PT conference. What are some of yours? I would love to hear!
