Juli Kendall's Weekly
Reading/Writing Workshop Journal
A MiddleWeb Listserv Project
Members of the MiddleWeb Discussion List and other interested teachers
are joining together to explore the Writing Workshop and other ideas about
supporting young adolescent writers and readers. Juli Kendall, a reading-writing
teacher/coach in Long Beach, California, is helping moderate the discussion.
Juli also posts a weekly journal entry from her reading/writing classroom.
This year, Juli will focus on her efforts to integrate subject matter into
her reading and writing workshop approach. In her first
journal of the year, she explains the rationale behind this move and
some of her thinking about how she hopes to accomplish this goal.
Find out more about our project at our Reading/Writing
Workshop homepage. You'll find Juli's background article here.
Links to many of the tools created by Juli and her colleagues are embedded
in these journals. Most often, when you click on them, a PDF file will begin
to download. You'll find a list of the downloads here.
If you'd like to join the daily discussion that parallels Juli's Journals,
find out how here.
2003-04 Reading/Writing
Workshop Journal
Week #15
Student-Led Conferences:
Many Parents Left with a Smile!
You can take all your good intentions about getting organized and your commitments
to reading all the books in the stack next to your bed and your other resolutions
and pack them away with the decorations. The best New Year's Resolution,
aside from getting more exercise, is about student-led conferences.
In an attempt to get parents more involved with our Reading and Writing
Workshops, I decided to organize student-led conferences this year. The
idea was to put the kids in the driver's seat by giving them the lead in
sharing information about their learning with their families. I wanted to
develop positive and mutually supportive relationships with family members
to achieve common goals for the literacy education of our students. And
it worked!
What did we do?
Held to coincide with report cards, these conferences, with 25 at-risk
5th grade students and their families, invited parents and others to support
our Reading and Writing Workshop program. I included the classroom teacher
for at-risk 5th graders and the Resource Specialist for Special Education
in my planning. The conferences were scheduled over several days
at convenient times for the families. Each day, we scheduled eight to nine
students and their families, who all came at the same time. Often, parents,
accompanied by aunts or uncles, attended along with several small children,
so we provided plenty of refreshments.
Preparation and practice are the keys to successful student-led conferences,
so I provided checklists of items for students to cover during the conference
and a rough "script" for them to follow. (A
copy of the script is attached). Students practiced doing their conferences
during class with a peer. This really helped them feel confident about their
ability to manage the conference.
During the conferences, students had an opportunity (uninterrupted by me)
to explain to their families what they were doing in school and discussthe
progress they were making toward meeting the reading benchmarks. They used
their writing workshop portfolios, Writer's Notebooks, Reading Journals,
a collection of the work they had done in class, and the mandated district
standards, as the focus of their conference. We took photos of the families
during their conferences and shared prints with them the next day. They
loved the photos!
At the end of the student-led conferences, I met individually with families
to explain the importance of the Reading Benchmark tests. Together we set
literacy goals for each student to pass the fiction and nonfiction reading
benchmarks -- at least at the middle of 4th grade level. This is the reading
standard for moving on to 6th grade. In addition, I enlisted the support
of families and encouraged their advice about how best to help their students
accomplish their goals.
So what? Why are student led conferences important?
These conferences were very important to my students and their families.
They were particularly effective with these at-risk 5th graders because
so many of their families do not speak English, and the students were able
to explain their work and the standards to them in their own language. This
may be the only time when students and families have meaningful conversations
about schoolwork and students can be proud of what they have accomplished.
Since I do not have a class of my own, I worked in conjunction with the
classroom teacher and the Special Education teacher to plan. Through the
conferences, I developed positive and mutually supportive relationships
with family members by working together to help students set a goal
to pass the Reading Benchmark tests to go to 6th grade. In addition, they're
significant because the conferences encourage conversations centered on
student work and the standards students are trying to meet. These student-led
conferences actively involved parents and families in every aspect of the
educational process, keeping them briefed on students' progress toward their
reading benchmark goals.
Student-led conferences have caught on slowly in my school. This is a risk-taking
activity for teachers because the classroom is visible to everyone: families,
administration, other teachers. To encourage teachers to try out student-led
conferences, I invited them to visit and see for themselves. Now, several
teachers are planning to try in the spring. Parents enjoyed the conferences
and felt they were beneficial for the students, so this may move student-led
conferences forward.
A side benefit of the student-led conferences was how much more motivated
students were to make sure their work was completed. Preparing for the conferences
helped my students take a more active role in their learning. With student-led
conferences, students used evidence from their portfolios to document their
accomplishments. Because students knew early in the school year that there
would be an audience for their work, they paid more attention to what they
did.
How did our students react?
The day after conferences, students wrote an evaluation of the experience.
I always learn so much from their comments. Here's a sample of their thoughts:
Joanne wrote:
My mom liked the meeting because she thought it was fun because
I got to do it with her and I liked it to. It just feels like your the teacher.
So me and her liked it. She also liked it because I got to show her around
of what I have been doing lately. I showed her my report card and my mom
was surprised because I got alot of E's. And I asked her if she liked my
report-card and she said, "Yes you've improved a lot more than last
year."
Jeannie wrote:
My mom was very happy when I was reading in the grade 6th book.
Also she was very happy about my grade in my report cards. I learned how
to be better in math and reading. I learned how to improve school work,
also getting good grade from my teacher, and trying to pass my benchmark
test to go to 6th grade.
Daniel wrote:
What my mom love about the conference is that I was working
hard and how I was doing in school all the time. .. We talk about my report
card. It was cool because I know how I am going in school. I learn about
what I need to work on and I need to work harder than ever to pass 5th grade.
I think I know how to be better in school, to follow directions, do all
my stuff, and be a good kid.
Carmen wrote:
My aunt liked that conference. And she said it was a better
conference than my sisters. And she said that she wants to come again.
Viviana wrote:
My mom liked my conference. I explained to her the grades and
the work I need to get better in my work or I might stay in 5th grade and
I don't want to because I want too graduate and I told her that I am going
to try my best.
Anonymous wrote:
And then I showed her my reading workshop box and she ask what
do you do with that box and I told her that when we finish writing workshop
we stand up and come and get the box and then we go back to our desk and
take out a book and start reading and to get a four you have to get into
the reading and stay in one good reading spot and don't bother the other
readers around you.
Byron wrote:
My dad liked the way my teacher was taking the picture. He also
liked the work I did. When my dad signed the paper I think he liked it also.
My dad said he'll help me with my reading. The other thing I could do much
better at is my attitude. When I went to the conference I said I think I
could do better at writing. What I think would have been more better was
if I would've read to him. The other thing that would've been more better
was if I would've got on the computer.
Now what?
Following up on the feedback from kids and families, as well as Byron's
suggestions about how to improve student-led conferences, I resolve to continue
doing conferences this way. The two other teachers and I will put our heads
together and plan how to improve for the next set of conferences in March.
They're converts. "Why didn't we do this before?" they both wondered.
But what's my biggest reason for this new resolution? Many of the parents
of these at-risk students came in with a scowl and left with a smile. Now,
that's a pretty good result.
--------------
Resources for Student Led Conferences:
There are several resources about student-led conferences on this MiddleWeb
resources page:
http://www.middleweb.com/mw/resources/ParentConfs.html
NMSA also has a book, A School-Wide Approach to Student-Led Conferences:
A Practitioner's Guide -- see http://store.nmsa.org/product.asp?3=175
SEE Juli's Curriculum Map for Content
Literacy - Unit Two
Read next week's journal
Read last week's journal
Read Juli's backgrounder about her work
Back to Juli's journal index
Back to the Writing/Reading Workshop Index Page