Student Led Conferences with Digital Portfolios

Have you ever thought about doing student led conferences? In case you have, but are
still on the fence, I hope to persuade you. Instead of the teacher conducting conferences with the parents (and there are still times that he/she should), there are a lot of benefits to letting the students conduct the meetings with their own parents. This allows the students to take charge, know their own goals, and share their academic progress. To start, the students get to choose how they will welcome the parents to the meeting. From there they will discuss their goals and ho they are doing. Students can use their digital portfolio as a means of sharing with the parents. These can be created through apps like Sesame and Seesaw. With both of thee apps, students take either pictures or videos of their work and submit those snapshots to keep track of their progress. The students can then share either Qr codes or links with their parents so that they can follow along. So how do you prepare your students for this conference? The teacher needs to make sure the students know what to expect. This can be done by first creating an example presentation. It is good to run through everything they will talk about and even have them practice in front of the class or with a partner on what they will say. The students may also have a script or outline that they can use during the conference. These conferences are beneficial for the students at school and at home. This will help the students and parents have things to talk about where as most students usually go home and say "I don't know" when the parents ask what they have learned. In the conference, the parents and students can not only cover what progress has been made, but also make new goals so that everyone is on the same page. Overall having students led conferences encourages the students to take responsibility in their learning, gain speaking skills (great for future use), express themselves, and self assess. I would like to use this in my future classroom because I also think it will increase the odds of parent participation and let them know where they can help while being involved in their child's education. Below is an example of a kindergarten student leading a conference.