Parent Teacher Conferences

Parent Teacher Conference are always SO much work, right?! You spend so much time preparing for 15 quick minutes. I hope to give you some quick tips below to make your night a success!

My school has PT conferences the week before Columbus Day in October. Considering that we start in August, that is pretty early in the school year! We do not have a report card to hand out, but I want to make sure that my parents walk away with something. To prepare, I always fill out the sheet below for each of my students. I have the bullets as talking points and share evidence that supports them as we go along. I also put together a packet of things to work on the areas that are not checked so that they have some idea of what they can do to help their child.

Click the page to download!

After preparing the page, I put the evidence in the order that I am going to talk in and paper clip it together. I find that is much easier that shuffling through a file folder. I then put my file folders in conference order so that I can easily find each child's materials.

I am lucky in that my school does all the scheduling for me through the website My Conference Time. I know the service isn't free, but there are other similar ones out there.

Before the night begins, I put a sign outside my door with each child's conference time and make sure it says something about knocking at their conference time. I find a knock at the door helps to speed things along if they go long!

I also leave out my 1:1 iPad cart so that my parents can take a peek into their child's iPad and leave a special picture and note for them. You could do something similar even if you do not have a full set of iPads. Before I had iPads I left out class books so that the parents could see books we had been creating.

Last but not least, it's conference time! I try to ask parents about huge questions right away just so that I know we have time to answer what is weighing heavy on their minds. Sometimes I even send out an email asking them for these questions in advance. I want to close each conference on a positive note, so I ask parents to leave a little note for their children. I won these cute cut out shoes from a blogger meet up I was at which made a perfect door for this year. You can also download a freebie at my TpT store here to set a door up in a rockstar theme!

Click the picture to download the sign!

I hope that I have given you some good tips for your next PT conference. What are some of yours? I would love to hear!