>  Character Education Lesson Plan Bank

Student-Led Parent Conference

Overview

Instead of visiting school periodically to listen to teachers explain how their children are doing, parents are directly guided through this process by students themselves. Everyone benefits: students learn responsibility and presentation skills, parents get a new perspective on how their children are performing, and teachers escape the tedium of assembly-line recitations. The key is preparation.

Materials

•  Three-ring notebooks for students

Procedure

1. At the beginning of the school year or grading period, explain to students the importance of parent conferences. Tell them they will be responsible for preparing a portfolio of their work and direct them to set aside a binder in which to file their assignments and special projects.
   
2. A week before the conference, send an invitation letter to parents. Three days before the conference, direct the students to prepare their presentations, which should include at least one quiz, one homework assignment, and one lesson from which they feel they learned the most. Tell them to complete the handout on the following page to serve as a cover sheet for their presentation materials. (You might also encourage them to talk about what they learned in terms of the Six Pillars of Character.) The day before the conference, practice presentations with the students by assuming the role of the parent, then by assuming the role of the student while the students pretend to be parents. In their presentations, students should cover the purpose of assignments, what was learned, the grade received, and why. Finally, students should help prepare the conference room(s) by cleaning, setting up refreshments, etc.
   
3. During the conference, visit with each family, pointing out students’ strengths. If you're coordinating this activity with other teachers in a "team teaching" environment, make sure parents know each teacher on the team is available for discussion. Direct those students whose parents can’t attend to hold their conferences at home; these students should return to you a form (designed by you) signed by their parents signifying the home conference has taken place.

This lesson is from the Good Ideas book, available for purchase from the CHARACTER COUNTS! online store: http://www.charactercounts.org/materials

Adapted from "Letting Students Lead Parent Conferences" by Laura Hayden, a teacher at Derby Middle School in Derby, Kansas. Her article is posted on the National Association of Elementary School Principals website (www.naesp.org/comm/mmf98b.htm).

Life Skills 

Standard 2. Uses conflict-resolution techniques.

Level IV, Benchmark 5. Understands that three effective responses to criticism are 1) acknowledgement, 2) token agreement with a critic, and 3) probing for clarification.

http://www.mcrel.org/standards-benchmarks/