Student Led Conference

We had our first Students-led Conference (SLC) on 23^rd March, Friday. As the name suggests, the conference was led by the students who shared their learning with their parents. Prior to this, students picked their samples of work which they wanted to share, reviewed it with the teacher and did some goal setting after identifying the areas of improvement. Students also thought about the ways they could seek help from their parents and teachers.  Besides reviewing their work from UOI, Math and Language arts, students also assessed their day-to-day work-habits through a rubric.

Each student got 15 minutes to present his/her work and discuss the goals. Students welcomed their parents and then shared the purpose of this conference. They took their parents through their best as well as not-so-good work and talked about their strengths and areas of improvements. Parents agreed to help them in the raised concerns and so did the teacher. All the 3 parties signed the documents, a copy of which was sent home on Monday.

 

This conference allowed the students to review their work with a critical eye and come up with some short term (SMART) targets which would help them improve. The entire process of chalking out a road map for themselves, gave them a sense of ownership of their work and helped them realize what they need to do next in order to improve.

Parents were overwhelmed to see their child talking about his/her areas of improvement and also telling them (parents) how they can help them (students) work on the target areas. While most of the students conducted this conference confidently, one student got nervous at the outset and broke down. In her reflection, she requested for another chance to share her work with her parents. After mutual consent, we agreed upon another slot on the following Wednesday where she sailed through the entire conference very confidently. Both, the student and her parents felt better after this conference.

Overall it was a great opportunity for the students to review their work, set targets, chalk out a road map for themselves and finally share it with their parents. It made them more confident and aware of their own strengths and shortcomings. Coming from them, all the suggestions made much more sense to their parents, who also promised to help in whichever possible way. I personally would rate an SLC over the usual PTM’s for reflecting on a student’s work in a meaningful manner.

Vandana Parashar

Form 4 Tutor