Parent Teacher Conferences

Parent Teacher Conferences today - and I've been up since roughly 2:30 this morning. That makes for a lovely combination, doesn't it? More like a toxic one! 

So what's a gal to do when she can't sleep? How about a little personal Professional Development? 

This first one, I have no idea what I was looking at that gave me this idea. I think it was turning over of my mind from yesterday's Grade Level PLC where we talked about how to step up the rigor. My students have Reading Journals. I've tried, at the end of the week, to have them do some writing about our story from our anthology, or to complete a graphic organizer. Last night, I got to thinking, why don't I have them write every day - or at least more often? I was thinking that on Mondays, I could have them write a prediction on our story. Maybe on Wednesday, I could have them write a short bit about their favorite part, or something that would tie into our comprehension strategy for the week. I don't know for sure, it's a work in progress, but I like this idea. 

Second, I ended up at Tunstall's Teaching Tidbits and she had a nice post about teaching phonics, which led me to different places on her blog, and in the midst of that, I saw some little books she had made. Each one of the little books focuses on one set of phonics skills - like Y says i {we just did this recently}. And I was thinking that this might be something that I could make into class books. My thought was I could do the first page, and student could do their own page. I might even make this a bit competitive - I have some little 8x8 photo albums. I don't know how many pages are in each one, but I could say that the best - say, 10 get in the book! I'd love to have my kids practice reading sentences that have phonics that we just learned. {OK, that's a terrible sentence!}

Now I've got to run so I won't be late for conferences! Happy Thursday. Hoping I can stay awake and alert all dang day!

Thinking About Conferences

Here's part of my "haul" from the Valentine's Day party at school:

Thank you and oh my goodness. This was my before school haul. Then I got a whole bunch more during the party. Yup, some of this is headed to hub-bub's work for those moochers to take care of. 

Did you survive your party? I told my kids not to mention the V word until 3:00! Or there would be sad times for sure!!

OK, serious school stuff now - 
here's my problem:

I have this cute little field trip form from the semester I taught 3rd grade - 6 years ago! But for some reason I made mega copies. {This pictures does not adequately show the stack!} I also was quite clever and made a pre-field trip form. Oh, yes, I was on a roll! 

The problem - we aren't even going on any field trips this year. And this has been in my file cabinet for 6 years! But we are limited on copies now. And I might want it ... someday! But my files cabinets are starting to bulge and I need the room. Argh! I think I need someone to come stand beside me and say "it's ok to toss that!" 

{Now wasn't that some serious school stuff!!}

Our parent teacher conferences are in a couple weeks, so I've been trying to think ahead to those. Alyce at Mrs. Bartel's School Family had a good link to another blogger's packet for conferences. Of course, not one to take the easy way, I'm going to modify it for my class.

Something else I'm doing is taking data from my class and putting it into graphs. Boy, if that doesn't scare some parents. OK, really, I'm not doing it to be mean:

But if you are all happy that your kiddo is the highest in the class, maybe thinking about why they haven't moved up in 6 months of school would be a good idea. {This is for DRA scores - blue is coming into 2nd grade (1st grade scores); red is September; green is December}. 

Anyway, I've never done this before, but I'm going to try it {in a very gracious way!}. I don't really want to compare students, but I think it's good for parents to know - your child is the lowest in the class; or not making progress and others are. I'm a little nervous.

So what do you really want to tell your parents at conferences? And how are you going to do it? Inquiring minds want to know!

Monday Wrap Up

Happy Monday evening! Is anyone else as tired as I am? I came home from the weekend at college town with college daughter - ex haust ed! So after hub-bub and I unloaded the car and I told him about my visit, we sat down to watch an old Columbo movie - and I promptly fell asleep - about 8pm. And slept until 6:30 this morning, which is actually late for me.

We had a book fair at our school during Parent Teacher Conferences. Does anybody else do this? It works out great for the teachers - our PTO gives us some money to buy some books for our classroom. Here's what I got:

Whoo Hoo - I didn't get them until the end of the day - so I'll have to take a good look at them tomorrow.

Also, somebody was giving away this book shelf, 

so after much internal debate, I snagged it. I'm still not sure. It is two sided, and my thought was I could put books I didn't want out yet on the back side. But it is HEAVY! So I'd probably have to have both sides accessible. Now I'm trying to think through how to make it accessible to me and not to the kids - ha! Those snoopy little guys!! 

OK, I just have to tell this story. My last conference was a reschedule from the day before - and she picked the very last time I had before I got to leave for the day and head to college town to see college daughter. And they were late. I was so mad at myself, because I just had an inkling they would be late and I was kicking myself for even giving them the last available time. So I hustled through the conference and I said, "I'm sorry, my time's up. Did you have anything else." "Nope," said the mom. And I said, "Well, I'm heading out to college town to see my girl." And my sweet student said, "Cause that's where all your money goes, right?" Umm, yep. Guess I've said that a time or two, lol. 

Post Conferences

Happy Saturday to everyone! I'm here in college town to visit my college daughter - I'm at the motel and of course I woke up at my usual early bird time and she's at her dorm sleeping til her usual college Saturday wake up time and anybody that has teenagers knows what that means! 

I just got done with Parent Teacher conferences. What an exhausting time! And I've come to the conclusion that we should have get to know you conferences in August. And this comes after a beginning of the year when I've tried hard to meet the grownups at my students' houses. 

But now I know that my one little boy that speaks with a Spanish accent - won't speak Spanish at home and in fact, never learned Spanish. I learned why my one little friend always looks so tired - too many other kids share his room and don't want to go to sleep at night. I learned whose parents don't really speak any English - which makes me thankful for what those students are able to do in English, and reminds me - as much as they would want, it will be more difficult for them to help their child become a better reader of English. I learned who will support me at home - both with helping their kids read or do math facts or whatever -- and with discipline issues. It gives me all kinds of insight into my kids and the other, big, important part of their life. 

I know that my 20 minute conference, where I feel like I do a lot of the talking, is just a glimpse into my student's life. But it does help me have some perspective. And one thing I realized was that, particularly for two of my little sweeties, they need all the love I can show them. 

Ok, that feels like a horrible ending, but it's either quit there or write on and on. 

I am so looking forward to this time with my girl. And buying her a snug winter coat (I hope) and snow boots for her long walks around campus (no freshman 15 for my girl!). Happy weekend to you! 

Conferences

Hello. For some reason, this turned out to be some kind of frantic day for me. I was bringing back a lot of work from home to school this morning, and I knew I was getting a new student and he might come to my room first. And yes, he did. But then I just had the worst time finding things. Like my list of times for parent teacher conferences. And the math facts page each of my students is working on. And on and on it went. 

Anyway, first impressions. Can't change 'em, can you? So my new student comes with his aunt and Just Won't Even Talk! So I'm trying to decide if he's nervous, not bilingual at all, or what is going on. When we come back to the room with the class and I show him our library and tell him to grab a book to read - he goes over and comes back with -- Nothing! And there were a couple other similar things. Well, thank heavens, by the end of the day, he was talking and joining in. I think the big ice-breaker was that he was able to do the hands-on math activity I had the class doing.

My Parent/Teacher conferences are Tuesday night, all day Thursday and very early Friday morning. So I want to give one little hint that I do at Parent/Teacher conferences. Maybe some of you already do this. I open a Word file and I just go down my list of students and I write their name and anything I can think of. Maybe it's a concern - like, they are just not getting their math facts down, or they go to the bathroom several times more than any one else in class, or their handwriting is terrible. Or maybe I think right away of some way they have been super nice, or helpful, or done a good job on something. So my first go around is just my first thoughts. Then I go through this list several more times. If I have a student that I've only written down a concern for, then I try to write a couple positive things that I see. 

How does this help me? Well, I'm pretty forgetful. I surely don't want a conference to be finished, a parent gone out the door, when I remember - oh, yeah, I meant to say. The other thing is this helps me remember good things for all my students. This year, it isn't as hard, but one year, I remember about the only good thing I could say about one of my kiddos was - good handwriting. Yuck, that's terrible!!

What do you do to plan for conferences? How do you make sure you say everything you want to?