As you all learned this week at conferences, it is my philosophy that students should have the privilege and opportunity to share their work. This week we worked really hard preparing for our student-led conferences.
First, we went through our writing folders to pick the first book that we wrote and a book the students were most proud of. Students looked for a book they wanted to share with their families, and friends. Once we chose our "proudest" piece we practiced reading it to our friends. Take a look at our friends sharing their proudest work.
Next we went through our Exploration Journals to find a few of our favorite pieces of work. We learned how to safely open and close our journals. We discussed what makes us proud of our work and the importance of "Quality Work". As you can tell in the photos below, the students all found quite places around the classroom where they could reflect upon their work.
Now that we have work from both our writing folders and exploration journals, we got our portfolios (we left them in a circle for when we returned from lunch) and inserted our writing and explorations.
Once all the pieces were in their portfolios, we were ready to share with friends but we needed to be reminded of what it means to be an "active listener". Active listeners are engaged in the conversation. Our eyes are focused on the person or on the work they are showing. If they have "on topic" questions they should wait to ask when the speaker is finished talking. Each student knew that they would get a turn to speak and they needed to show respect to each other by being active listeners.
We needed to have a couple practice rounds before it was time to share our work with our families. We then shared with a friend in our classroom.
We shared our data sheets and told each other what the red dots mean.
We shared our first quarter work...
our treasure block stories...
our writing...
...and our self portraits.
We learned how to introduce our teachers to our parents and vice versa.
We also learned how to give a nice handshake!
Once we were done practicing with our friends, we took our portfolios to a classroom that does not yet have portfolios. Our students were proud to share their portfolios. The students in Mrs. Gore's classroom are now very excited to begin creating their own portfolios!
We enjoyed meeting with each and every one of you this week at conferences. We couldn't be more thrilled at how well the students did sharing their work. I look forward to all that the students will share at spring conferences!
Mrs. Atkin
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