This week I held a workshop with our teachers as we move to prepare for student led conferences to be held this term.
We know that effective reporting systems are the ones where 'student voice' is an integral part of the reporting process. The focus of student led conferences is the students talking about their learning goals and their next learning steps and how to get there.
The issue we face is also around accountability to parents. Parents need to know is where their child is achieving is OK for their age. If the teacher has this conversation at the student led conference with the parents then we risk disempowering the student.
I am a parent of a year 6 child and have experienced many student led conferences at Freemans Bay school. One thing I have noticed is that this approach requires us as parents to be be skilled and on board with this more collaborative approach to finding out what our kids are learning. Over the years our daughter has taken more and more ownership of her conference making them enjoyable, informative and relaxed. I suggest willingness from parents to be transparent at the time about what we don't understand, eg: about student achievement, with our kids and the teacher, then all three parties can learn and get clear together. I am pro collaboratice learning so of course this system works for me. Nicola Campbell
ReplyDeleteHi Nicola,
ReplyDeleteThankyou for your comment. I think you are right on the button - we need to strive to explore different ways to work together as a team and keep talking to each other about how we can make learning as authentic for the child as possible as well as meeting the parents needs.
If the child is the one that is talking about their learning then they are likely to be more engaged and motivated to improve. Especially when they are sharing their learning with people who are important to them like their parents. Its a far cry from teacher / parent interview when the child waited at home to hear what was said. I think the same applies for adults -imagine how disempowering it would be to have someone else talk about our goals on our behalf. It would mean our role is passive and remote. It would involve no "hard wiring" in our brain but would in someone elses. I think it is the same for students - they need to be in charge of their goals. Keep them at the centre and see what they can achieve. You should see some of the 5 year olds talking to their parents through their learning - it is so empowering for them.
Thankyou for your post.
As a new FBP parent this is the first time I've come across "student lead conferences". I was quite puzzled as to the structure and what the point was, as I had no information beforehand. Our child who is also somewhat new to them essentially winged it, showed us his work, goals that were apparently "the same for everyone" and where he sits in the class.
ReplyDeleteIt was good to see him take pride in his work and his teacher explained the learning levels and where he was up to, but the lack of personalised goals and structure makes me skeptical of the process. I do however think the concept is better than the disconnected world of parent/teacher interviews. It would have been good to have a report of our childs learning levels beforehand, so that we could understand his progress and the context of his goals.
I have just received my knowledge.net password and thought it may be the missing piece to the puzzle, but was surprised to find there is very little content on there. Again, I'm not sure how much or little content to expect, but I thought 10 posts was quite light for this stage in the year.
Hi Matt,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your post - we are always interested in getting feedback on the way we do things at Freemans Bay School.
We did send out a lot of information about the student led conferences prior to the event - through emails and the school newsletter. I wonder if you have got your email in our system. You can check what we have on the contact details through Knowledge NET. Sometimes we only have one parent email address but it is better to have both. Let us know if you need your email added to our contacts.
The report given at this time of the year is the National Standard Checkpoint. We felt it needed some teacher input as the curriculum strands can be a bit meaningless without the opportunity to have a bit of an explanation from the teacher. Hence it was given out at the conference.
Each term student goals are updated. One for reading, writing and mathematics at the beginning of the term and progress reflected on at the end of the term. So at this stage of the year there should be about 10 posts in that area. Parents can also add to the reflection area.
The goals are personalised to the students learning - not everyone in the class has the same goal - but everyone in the same reading group or maths group will have as they are working on the same goal in the group.
Your child should also have access to learning links through KnowledgeNET to support his learning at home.
I would be happy to show you around the system if you would like to have a tour of it. It does have a lot more than the student goals and goal reflections.
Our big challenge is to encourage parents to make comments on their child's pages on how they see the child is progressing with their goals. We are getting a lot more parents using KnowledgeNET but just having a look around rather than actually posting.
We do a written report at the end of the year and at the beginning of the next year the first conference is a three way goal setting conference based on the previous years achievements.
You can check in at any time on how your child is going just make a time or have a chat to the class teacher.
Student Led conferences are an opportunity for children to talk about their learning to people who matter most to them - their parents. The process should be empowering and motivating for the child as it puts them in the driving seat talking about their learning journey.