Conferences Round 2

Well, I only have 17 days left of school and yet I have not had my second round of conferences.  They are scheduled for next week.  In my opinion, holding conferences at this point in the school year is a waste.  Most of the kids and many of the parents have already checked out for the summer and what I accomplish during these conferences could easily be accomplished during an open house...but, since the district wants conferences, conferences I must provide! :)  That is where this comes into the picture:

I tried something a little different this time around.  I developed the idea last year but this year I jazzed it up a bit more!  We hold "student led conferences" and so third graders are supposed to talk to their parents for 30 minutes about school...it- just- doesn't- happen.  So, instead of doing the more traditional binders or power point presentations, we made a poster with different foldables!  The kids had a BLAST making them and I thought that their reflections on their strengths and challenges this school year were especially poignant.  It could easily work for an end of the school year activity so those of you who are "lucky" to still be going strong- go ahead and use it :)

We started with a poster sized paper and the students glued the circular My Scores Sheet to the center.  Then, each day we worked on a different foldable.  I only did 5 because we only worked on it for a week and we did one foldable a day.  My class is METICULOUS so we had to focus on only one a day if we wanted to go home! * (Anecdote in a footnote)

The first one we did was Our Favorite Book brochure.  We just tri-folded the paper, designed a cover, wrote a summary on the inside and on the last flap explained why it was our favorite book and why we recommend it!

Then we worked on reading- and listed our strengths, challenges and goals for fourth grade.

*I am not good at summaries. They push me down instead of pull me up.* TEAR!
We did the same thing for math

Then we wrote about our favorite third grade memory.  They had to really narrow it down because we were writing on the number 3 cut outs.

Finally we made our summer bucket lists.  The picked three things to put in their bucket.  I asked for two to help their brain grow and one could be whatever they wanted.

So there you have it! Fun and easy posters that they will take home with them after conferences and can keep as long as their little hearts desire!

*I wanted to share this anecdote but didn't want to interrupt my planned post.  My school does not have  an art class or art teacher however, we have a paraeducator who comes around every third day and leads an arts and crafts activity in your classroom so that each teacher has common planning time with their grade level.  It is so wonderful that my principal worked out this schedule but sometimes our art paras can be a little... ANYWAY, the other day we had art and my kiddos were SLOWLY working on their project (like I said, they are meticulous) and I could see that the art leader was getting frustrated by their pace.  She came around to a group of my darlings and said "You don't have to be so fussy. It's not that important." To which my darlings said "Shouldn't everything we do at school be important?" HAHAHA LOL, sometimes I truly love 9 year olds!