Student-Led Conferences

As family conferences are rapidly approaching, I figured it would be a nice time to talk about the student-led conferences that take place in our classroom and school!

As part of the culture of our school, we encourage students to take responsibility for their learning and education.  We want them to take ownership of the things they learn and be able to discuss their own areas of weakness, as well as their areas of strength.  They get the opportunity to reflect on these things and share them at their student-led conferences!

In our classroom, composed of 4th and 5th graders, the students do the following things to prepare for their conference.

First, they write their own narrative report.  We give them a guideline of the things they can include in their narrative, which includes questions they can reflect on in regards to their learning in each subject area and their behavior.  While we do not revise and edit their narrative for them, we do sometimes have the students add more information if their narrative is too vague or have them rewrite their narrative if it is illegible.  Our purpose for not revising and editing the narratives for the students is so that their family gets a true picture of the student's independent writing.  

Secondly, the students select 5 - 10 portfolio pieces that they would like to share with their families at the conference.   When students finish an activity at school, they choose to either display the activity in the hallway or classroom or put the activity in their portfolio folder.  Their portfolio folder is basically a hanging file folder where the students house all their completed work until it is time for them to pick and reflect on their best pieces.  For each conference, the students select the 5 - 10 pieces of work that they feel represents some of their best work and/or that show the most academic or behavioral growth.  The students write a small reflection that explains what the piece is and why they chose it.  

After the conference, we keep these portfolio pieces in a separate location and add to them after each conference.  At the end of the year, the students have a compilation of all their best work over the year!

Finally, for some students, we practice how their conference may run in order to help them feel prepared.   Because students have different personalities, the student-led conference is sometimes more challenging for some students than others, especially the first time around!  We typically can predict who these students are; therefore, we will practice with them before their conference.  The majority of the students, though, do not practice prior to their conference!

During the actual conference, the student sits in the teacher seat, while the family and I sit around the  table.   The student can show and talk about the portfolio pieces first or read the narrative, whichever he feels comfortable doing.  

During the conference, the families often ask the students questions, give them positive feedback, or share any concerns with the student.  The first to respond to these comments is the student...not me!  The student takes responsibility for what is happening in the room around his learning and behavior, whether it be positive or negative!

Throughout the conference, I may make comments or ask clarifying questions; however, I do not dominate the conversation.  Many times after the student's part of the conference, the families may have specific questions for me, but I always try to include the student in the answer somehow.  It may be by simply giving my response to the question and then asking if the student would agree or disagree and why.  

It is absolutely amazing to see these 9- and 10-year olds present their learning to their families!  It gives them accountability for what happens everyday in the classroom, as well as helps them learn to articulate their strengths and weaknesses as learners, both academically and behaviorally.  

Just as we differentiate students' instruction, we also differentiate the amount of support we give the students at their conference.  We may do more prompting with some students, particularly some of our autistic and special ed students; however, it is still our goal to get them to be as independent as possible in terms of presenting their work by the last conference of the year.  

It's hard to imagine "parent/teacher" conferences that do not include a student!  Shouldn't it be "student/parent/teacher" conferences?  After all, it's the student's learning that is the focus of the conference...shouldn't the student be there and take an active role?  Food for thought!  :-)   

 

Cooperative Learning

A basic definition of cooperative learning in a school setting is the practice of a small group of students working actively together to perform a task or reach a goal.  But why do teachers choose to embed cooperative learning into their daily instruction?

There are many benefits of cooperative learning!  Some of them include:

• Students learn to work together to reach a common goal, versus competing against each other
• Students often work harder in order to contribute to the team
• Discussion amongst students often leads to deeper levels of thinking about the topic
• Discussion amongst students often leads to deeper understanding of the topic
• Students learn to value and respect each others opinions/ideas/beliefs/perspectives
• Many times, higher-level achievement occurs
• It adds a safety net for students who may struggle academically in school
• It allows students to practice leadership skills
• Research has proven that cooperative learning is often a favorable approach to learning for minority groups
• It enhances social skills
• It allows students to learn and grow from one another
• Students experience an interdependence on others, while still having some individual accountability
• It can bring students together who have very different backgrounds, cultures, races, etc with a common goal

Honestly, if you research the benefits of cooperative learning, I'm sure there is a plethora of material you can read to discover many more benefits!  

 So, with a bunch of research that tells why we should include cooperative grouping in our classrooms, why do many teachers not do it?  

Some of the most common reasons I've heard as to why teachers do not like cooperative learning are:

• Conflicts with students within the group
• Feeling unsure of individual accountability of students
• Noise level
• Students not contributing at all....just along for the ride

My response to the reasons above are as follows:

• A teacher clearly needs to be proactive when selecting groups, giving special consideration to which students (s)he puts together.  If a student really struggles with working cooperatively, we generally have individual work that focuses on the same skill; however, it's not quite as fun!  :-)  We have the student do this work, and then try it again the next time we do cooperative groups.

• In terms of the teacher worrying about individual accountability, this can be handled in a couple of different ways.  First, roles can be assigned to each student in the group, so each student is responsible for something right out of the gate.  We also have had students fill out a self-assessment after their group work, which includes how much they contributed to the group and how they grew academically or socially during the task (along with several other questions).  There is also a part in the cooperative learning self-assessment where they can write about concerns they had regarding their group as a whole and other members of the group.  Having students individually reflect on their learning after the group work has been another way we have addressed this issue.

• First of all, there has to be some noise in order for students to talk and work collaboratively!  A teacher's tolerance of noise level is going to vary from person to person; however, there probably are very few cooperative learning activities that require yelling!!  Therefore, what works best to address this concern is to have a protocol established that focuses on noise level.  This could be a nonverbal warning, a verbal warning, and even a consequence for what happens if they don't adjust their noise levels.  We have had students do a cooperative learning activity where all their communication had to be silent (many of them wrote their conversation down) because their noise level was way to high, and they just couldn't seem to adjust it that day!  That rarely happens, but we do have a protocol in place, which the students help us create, for when it does.  We have to be careful and remember that noise is by no means a bad thing, as it can be reflective of thoughtful conversation amongst students, as well as excitement about learning!  We need to use our professional judgment (and even the judgment of students who may think it's too loud) to decide what is most appropriate for the specific cooperative learning activities. 

• The students who like to take a joy ride during cooperative learning activities and just sit and let everybody else do the work can be swayed by having the group roles, the self-assessments, the individual reflections, and the independent work that I wrote about earlier!

I do love cooperative learning and am proud that it is a natural part of our classroom.  We are very aware, though, that there is not one way of teaching and learning that meets the needs of every single student; therefore, cooperative learning is one of the practices we use in our classroom!  It's good practice to mix up how the teaching and learning occurs in your classroom and never rely on only one way!  :-)