Student-led Conferences and Digital
Portfolios: Let the student do the learning and the talking!
Student-led
conferences are exactly what they sound like they are, the students did the
learning, so they are the ones talking about their leaning in the conference. During
these conferences, the students tell their parents and teacher about their
academic growth and the knowledge that they have gained so far in the school
year. This opportunity allows students to be responsible for their learning and
to reflect on their performance in the classroom. The students will talk for
the whole entire meeting, they will choose what they will discuss within the
teacher’s guidelines, they will put together the portfolio, and the teacher
will guide the student in preparation for the conference. The student will
discuss what is going good with their academics, what they need to work on, their
goals they have for themselves, what they need help or assistance with either
at home or at school, and their social skills in the classroom. At first this sounds
like a lot for students to be capable of doing, but this takes a lot of
practice and preparation throughout the school year in order for the conference
to be successful and beneficial. When the time is taken to model, guide, and
apply the expectations of a student-led conference, the students can really present
an outstanding presentation. I would love to implement this in my classroom because
it is a great learning experience for the students. It brings more open and
honest communication between the student, parents, and teacher, greatly boosts the
students’ confidence, and allows the students to be more active in their education.
I feel that all teachers should consider implementing student-led conferences,
because not only does it help the student’ academics, but also their communication
skills, social skills, and gives them a source of responsibility that they take
pride in. The use of digital portfolios can make the preparation for the student-led
conference a lot easier. A digital portfolio is electronic evidence that is
assembled and managed on the web. Seesaw is a great app that can connect the
line from the digital portfolio to the student-led conference. This app is a
student driven digital portfolio for students to use to show their evidence of
work to back up what they are discussing in their student-led conference. Student-led
conferences and digital portfolios allow students to be creative and design the
whole conference to meet what they want to be the outcome of the conference.
Students are able to use critical thinking strategies as they go through the planning
process and think about what they want to talk about and what they want to
include in the conference as they create their digital portfolio. They are able
to learn great communication and collaboration skills as they prepare to lead
this conference in front of their parents and teacher. Student-led conferences and digital portfolios
provide such an incredible learning experience for students to learn academic
knowledge, social skills, and 21st century skills.
The link below provides the steps as to how to get student-led conferences started up in your own classroom! A video is also included to for those of us that are visual learners, and want to actually see how its done!
This link tells us about 8 different apps that are out there to use for digital portfolios! Evernote, Voicethread, and Kid blog are just a few that this website tells us about.
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