Student-Led Conferences Help Our Kindergarteners Become Leaders of Their Own Learning

By Sandy Armstrong

Our school’s journey toward student-led parent conferences began with our participation in ABPC’s Powerful Conversations Network during the 2014 and 2015 school years, when we were able to take part in the book study of Leaders of their Own Learning by Ron Berger.

Howell Graves is an all-kindergarten school in Muscle Shoals City Schools. Would Berger’s vision for student-led conferences work in kindergarten? We believed it could.

Precursors to conferencing

During the first two years of PCN membership, our faculty at Howell Graves implemented learning targets, checks for understanding, and using data with students. After our success in those areas we felt that our next step should be involving our students in sharing their targets and goals with parents in student-led conferences.

The Howell Graves faculty agreed with Berger’s belief about the need for student ownership of learning and that “student-led conferences require and empower students to take the lead role in communicating their learning.”

During this same year we were changing our report card to standards-based. Student-led conferences served as a perfect connection to share standards from the report card and introduce this method of grading to our parents.

Our initial planning began in August of 2016. Our resources were Leaders of Their Own Learning and other versions of student-led conferencing that included kindergarten students. Among our main considerations were questions like time of year, the amount of time for each conference, and the time of day (during or after school). Most important, the learning targets and goals that would be shared during the conference had to be determined with the students.

Finalizing our plans

Some final decisions reached after meeting and planning were that:

• the conferences would be in the fall and spring of the 2016-17 school year;
• each conference would be 20 minutes;
• the conferences would be during the school day;
• each class would have a substitute during this day;
• teachers would be situated outside the classroom door;
• students would come out of class during their conference, and
• five to seven learning targets would be shared in the areas of Reading, Math and Behavior.

Students also chose a self-selected celebration to end their conference. Some examples of the celebrations were reading a book, sharing journal writing and stories, and presenting math journals.

Our kindergarteners primarily discussed Reading and Math standards during the conference time, but another big benefit of student-led conferences is giving students authentic opportunities to use the speaking and listening standards.

Strategies and supports

Other strategies that were used during the conferencing included visual cues, such as the Learning Target, or a picture to help students remember the area being discussed.

Each conference began with a welcome from the student, who then shared their Reading, Math and Behavior Learning Targets and the celebration. Students created thank you cards or thank you videos for parents who took the time to attend.

Teachers also had a suggested list of questions for parents to ask their child during the conference.

What would you like to learn more about?
What are you most proud of?
Did you reach your target? Why or why not?
It makes me proud to see that…
I can tell that you improved in…

Prepping students to lead a conference

Preparing our kindergarteners for the student-led conferences was an essential part of our planning process. After several discussions about how to prepare students it was determined that teachers would have substitutes for part of a day to create time for the prepping process.

Our practice day was the week before the date of the conference. The practice period would provide teachers with one-on-one time with each student to review learning targets and goals that would be discussed with their parents.

We knew early on that we wanted every student to have the opportunity to share their learning targets and goals. To that end, other faculty, staff, school leaders (including our superintendent) and members of the school community were available for students if they did not have a parent or guardian in attendance for the conference.

Student Data and Digital Resources

Instead of the data notebook often used by older students, our kindergarteners used their digital portfolio on ESGI to share their data. ESGI is a digital manager of student assessment data. It creates pie charts for students so they can easily track their progress on learning targets – it’s really a tool to help them be successful as leaders of their own learning.

Here’s how we did it: Each ESGI assessment was aligned with the learning targets that were being shared. The ESGI assessments were given one-on-one with the students. Folders for each student were created in ESGI specifically for the student-led conference. Each folder contained the areas for each learning target that would be shared.

Here are examples of student digital portfolios on ESGI for sharing with parents. Teachers created a student-led conference folder for each student. (Click to enlarge.)

We used another digital tool – the Seesaw Learning Journal – for student celebrations. Seesaw journals can contain videos, recordings and samples of student work in a digital portfolio format. It allowed teachers easy access during the conference to several samples of student work for sharing with parents.

Fine-tuning the process

After initial implementation during the 2016 school year, our faculty and staff reflected on our first fall and spring conferencing events. Among our fine-tuning decisions were to have the fall student-led conference earlier in the semester and to change some of the learning targets that were used in the fall conference.

We have now had two years of successful student-led conferences. The feedback from our parents has been positive – they appreciate being more involved in their child’s learning and having more awareness of their progress.

Our attendance from parents has ranged from 90-95% for each conference event. As a result of implementing student-led conferences, Howell Graves was selected as a 2017 CLAS School of Distinction.

During our upcoming spring 2018 student-led conference, Howell Graves kindergarten students will lead their parents in sharing STEM activities that they have participated in during the school year. We are looking forward to introducing this new use of student-led conferences and continuing this form of family communication and student leadership development in future years.

Sandy Armstrong is the Instructional Partner at Howell Graves School in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. She is in her fourth year as Instructional Partner. She has 28 years of experience in elementary education (kindergarten and first grade) in both Alabama and Georgia school systems. She is a graduate of University of North Alabama and Auburn University.