(15.1) Turn to p. 559 in
Ormrod’s text. Now, imagine that you are meeting with Ingrid’s
grandmother today to explain her scores on the recent standardized achievement
test pictured at the bottom of p. 559. What will you tell her about Ingrid’s
performance? Her strengths? Her weaknesses? Even though this is not a
criterion-referenced test, if Ingrid’s grandmother asks you what she could be
doing at home to help strengthen Ingrid’s skills, what will you suggest?
First
of all, I would thank Ingrid’s grandmother for coming to meet me and for taking
an interest in her granddaughter’s education. I would praise her for her
involvement and encourage future involvement by telling her how important she
is to Ingrid’s success in school. Next I would share why I enjoy having Ingrid
in my class and give specific examples of ways that she is doing well. Then I
would begin to explain Ingrid’s test scores. I would first explain the “National
Percentile Bands” or confidence intervals, and how they reflect the amount of
error that could affect Ingrid’s percentile scores. Then I would discuss
reading comprehension, science and social studies because these are the
subjects where Ingrid scored the highest. I would say how impressive it is that
Ingrid scored well above average in these three subjects. Then I would discuss
math concepts, spelling, and math computation. These are the subjects that
Ingrid scored average to below average on. I would remind Ingrid’s grandmother
that there is a margin for error on these tests. These scores are not a reason
to worry, but I would like to take precautionary measures so that Ingrid does
not fall behind. I would then offer resources for Ingrid to work on at home in
order to improve in spelling and math computation, which are her weakest
subjects. Then I would thank Ingrid’s grandmother again for meeting with me and
encourage her to contact me if she has any questions.
Kegan, I really liked how you would start the conference by showing Ingrid's grandmother that you appreciate her. I think for a lot of parents, especially if it is their first parent teacher conference that they may feel as if they are being assessed as well as the child. I agree that having a relationship with the parent is important to encouraging future involvement. I found this tip sheet online for parent-teacher conferences.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.scholastic.com/teachers/article/teaching-tip-parent-teacher-conferences
This tip sheet suggests, as you have as well, to start with the students strengths. I think this will ease the parent's mind and show them that you are invested in the child.