Does your elementary school use a student-led conference model for parent-teacher conferences?  Student-led conferences can be a bit overwhelming for specials teachers, as we see EVERY child in the school.  How could you possibly meet with every parent or child over the course of a few evenings?  I’m sharing some of the ways I’ve made student-led conferences manageable and enjoyable for music!

Student-Led Conferences

The lovely thing about student-led conferences is that they function exactly how they sound.  The student leads the parent through their learning.  As a teacher, I’m there to facilitate and confer with parents when necessary (e.g. behavior or learning challenges). 

It’s important to discuss expectations and outcomes with your students before the evening of the conference.  Discuss what information would be appropriate to share.  Why are we sharing it?  What did we learn from a unit of study?  Give students opportunities to discuss with their classmates what they learned.  This will help all students to develop talking points with their parents as they come to conferences.

Choose Grades to Highlight

Many of us teach in buildings where we teach five or six grade levels.  It’s impossible to have every child come to the music room on conference night.  Instead, choose 1 or 2 grades to highlight with visits to the music room.  Do you have a grade level that recently finished a big unit of study?  Invites those students to come in to share the learning with their parents.  That doesn’t mean we don’t address the other grade levels, it means that we do it in ways where the discussion of learning happens outside of the music room.  I give grade level teachers a note to put on each child’s desk with prompts about what we’ve learned in music.

Lower Elementary Ideas

For my lower elementary students, we share tangible things we are working on in music.  I put together a learning statement for parents with an explanation of the concept or skill we are working on.  If there is a recent assessment from music class, I include that information as well.  I also suggest a few  songs students can sing to demonstrate their learning.  Anything you are learning in the music room can be shared with parents.  

Ideas for lower elementary students:

• Share your students’ singing voice development
• Share their steady beat development
• Share songs that demonstrate an understanding of Form, Harmony, Instrument Families, Dynamics, or Tempo
• Share songs from Around the World
• Share music reading development (have students read rhythm patterns or tonal patterns and connect to a song)
• Share a performance on an instrument (set up one instrument for children to demonstrate how they’ve learned to perform)

Upper Elementary Ideas

Sharing ideas for upper elementary always feels a bit easier as we do a lot of project based learning.  Again, put together a learning statement sheet for parents about the concepts or skills you’ve been learning in music.   I’ve shared everything from invitations to hear original compositions, to video of class performances, to recorder progress reports.  More often than not, my upper elementary students are the ones invited to the music room during student-led conferences.  Again, it’s so important to devote time in class to discussing student-led conferences and helping students to develop talking points about what they’ve learned in music, how they learned it, and why they learned it.

Here are some ideas for upper elementary:

• Share small group compositions on instruments or iPads (e.g. Garage Band)
• Share music reading development (have students read patterns and connect to a song)
• Share a performance on an instrument (set up one instrument for children to demonstrate how they’ve learned to perform)
• Share a progress report for recorder or ukulele
• Invite students to teach their parents to play a song or chord on an instrument  with proper technique (e.g. xylophone, recorder, or ukulele)

Final Thoughts

Student-led conferences are a great way to connect with parents and students to share the learning that occurs in the music room.  Be sure to provide time in your class to discuss the expectations and outcomes with your own students so that they make the most of the time with their parents.

I encourage you to reach out to your staff, if you haven’t had conversations already, about student-led conferences.  We discuss and coordinate what days each grade will have student led conferences.  I share with each grade level team how I intend to organize my student-led conferences.  I also ask how they would like me to share materials with them.  Some teachers prefer that I put handouts or invitations in their mailbox, while others prefer I give the information directly to students at the end of class.  Communication and collaboration with your classroom teachers is vital to for a successful student-led conference.

Do you do student-led conferences at your school?  How do you set up your conference time with students?  Leave me a comment below!

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