Digital Portfolios and Student-Led Conferences
What feeling do you get when you hear the word "conference?"
Remove the fear or anxiety when hearing this word by changing traditional parent conferences into student-led conferences!
What are Student-Led Conferences?
Student-led conferences: where the students are the leaders of meetings held with teachers and parents. The teacher is just there for additional support and assistance.
Benefits of Student-Led Conferences:
- Builds relevance to the material students have learned
- Provides the opportunity for children to accept responsibility for their learning
- Allows children to reflect on what they have done and learned in the classroom
- Children learn important leadership skills
- Parents are more involved in the conferences
- Empowers students by giving them a voice and allowing them to take on that leadership role
- Helps build student accountability by having them set goals and strive to meet them throughout the school year
- Allows for deeper conversations and deeper levels of thinking
- Positive environment
How to Start Student-Led Conferences in the Classroom:
- Decide on what work samples or assessments should be highlighted
- Think on how the students will present the imformation
- Make sure to gather materials from the very beginning
- Get parents to sign up
- Organize the classroom according to the desired flow
- Have the students practice 1-2 days before
- Implement student conferences
- Evaluate the student-led conferences with the parents
What are Digital Portfolios?
A collection of students' work, assessments, goals, and reflections that is built through the use of technology.
Benefits of Digital Portfolios:
- Students own up to their achievements
- Allows them a place to showcase what they are interested in
- Allows students to reflect on their own learning
- Allows students to set/meet/recreate goals
- Showcases strengths AND weaknesses
- Allows for collaboration between the students and teacher to decide on what is showcased
Resources to Build Digital Portfolios:
- Imovie
- Seesaw
- ClassDoJo
- Google Classroom
- KidBlog
- Google Slides
Why Student-Led Conferences?
Student-led conferences build preparation skills, organization skills, reflection skills, and communication skills. They also provide individualized learning experiences while also allowing students to be leaders of their own learning.
Reflection:
Before my first semester in the education program, I had never heard of digital portfolios and student-led conferences and had no clue what they were. I had a good idea after my first semester, but did not know how capable they were. I think what stuck out to me most on this presentation was the statement that teachers tend to be too focused on the performance during student-led conferences, rather than focused on what is put into it and what comes out of it. As a future educator, perfectionism will be my largest obstacle and I could easily see myself getting caught up in putting on the "perfect" show for parents instead of putting more time and focus into the content. One thing that I did not know about student portfolios is that there are no requirements to the amount or content of entries; digital portfolios grant students the freedom to express what they have learned in their own personalized format. In my future classroom, I can see digital portfolios as an aspect of my student-led conferences. I can also see myself using student-created digital portfolios as an assessment tool of what my students have learned.
All pictures are from Google and Pinterest!
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