Conferences and Communication

    

This bit of feedback from Tonya who is using the 4th Grade Common Core Math Assessment with Learning Goals and Scales, just reminded of those days when I sat through 30 plus conferences trying to explain in 10-15 minutes what we'd been working on for the last 5 months, and how their child was doing. Until I started using my Student Portfolios I didn't have a simple tool to help you communicate student progress with students, parents, administrators, and other teachers. 

Six years ago I was working at a Title I elementary school as a gifted resource teacher 75% of the time, and a reading interventionist 25% of the time. Talk about different spectrums! Luckily for me I worked with small groups, but since my students came from five different grade levels, and there were at least 3 teachers for every grade level, communication meant a lot of data and meetings! Ugh. I'm one of those weird teachers that found staff meetings to be fun because I got to talk to other teachers! But, data meetings – definitely not fun. Lots of numbers next to each name, but no examples of student work to help understand the fine details that could shed light on why each child was performing at their own level. It seems that with all of the inclusion, clustering, interventions, and enrichment programs being implemented, most classroom teachers have a whole team of co-workers to share students with. This means that communicating about student progress doesn't just happen a few times a year, but possibly every week!