MYP Students Lead Their Parent Conference

Do you remember your parents going to school to find out how you were doing as a student?  Did you ever go with them?  At QAIS, our students not only come to the parent conference, they actually prepare and lead them.  The student is always the center of the conference.   Our students can explain their learning and difficulties they have when learning better than the adults.  Leading a conference gives students a chance to show their leadership and communication skills to their parents and to their teachers.  It is appropriate, therefore, to call our conferences Student-Led Conferences.

Students have been collecting and saving their work in a binder since we began the school year.  To prepare for conferences, they reviewed their assignments and tests and selected key pieces that would highlight their learning.  They prepared comments for each piece selected and filed them in a portfolio to share with their parents at the conference.

On the Friday before the conferences, we met as a secondary group and practiced delivering the conference  content with advisors and with peers.

The following Monday was show time!  Each student had 60 minutes to share their work.  That sounds like a lot of time for an MYP student to talk and lead a discussion.  It actually IS a lot of time, and our students did a fantastic job.