Student-Led Conferences and Passage Presentations

 

(Originally titled “When Students Lead Their Learning”)

            In this helpful article in Educational Leadership, Expeditionary Learning honcho Ron Berger describes two practices that shift assessments from evaluating and ranking students to motivating and equipping them to learn:

            • Student-led report card conferences – “For most students in the United States, parent conferences are a mysterious event,” says Berger. “The student is a passive recipient of information from the teacher, passed through the parent.” This dynamic changes completely when students lead report card conferences. Here are excerpts from a Kansas kindergarten student presenting her goals and samples of her work to her parents, watched by the teacher (see the link below for video footage of this and other student presentations):

-    She explained her strategies for adding. “I can find the sum of two numbers,” she said.

-    “I can stretch out words to hear all the sounds.”

-    Showing several drafts of a drawing of a butterfly, she said, “What I like about this is the colors because they look beautiful. But I need to fix the symmetry, because this wing is smaller than that wing.”

Students get increasingly sophisticated as they move through the grades. Berger describes a conference in which a seventh grader explains to her father how she’s using context clues, evaluating algebraic expressions, spotting a sequence error in a science quiz, and focusing on two goals in science, her weakest subject.

            “When students must report to their families what they’re learning – what skills and understandings they have, what areas still challenge them, and where they hope to get to – they must understand their own learning and progress,” says Berger. “They take pride in what they can do and take responsibility for what they need to work on. Education stops being something done to them and begins being something that they are leading.”

            For teachers, student-led conferences catalyze high-quality instruction. Students must be able to explain what they are learning, which means teachers must monitor each student’s progress and push for conceptual understanding. And the conferences involve parents much more deeply in their children’s learning. Berger says that most Expeditionary Learning schools get 100 percent family attendance.

The following guidelines are critical to the success of these conferences:

-    There are clear expectations for what students will say and share and how they will involve parents;

-    Teachers or advisors prepare students, focusing on speaking skills, courtesy, and reflection on how work is meeting learning targets.

-    Portfolios of high-quality work anchor the conferences and show progress in academic work, character traits, and other school activities.

-    Schoolwide guidelines deal with logistics, scheduling, and outreach.

Implementing student-led conferences inevitably draws attention to the rigor and quality of curriculum and learning, and that’s a good thing, says Berger.

            • Passage presentations – At key transitions (for example, 8^th, 10^th, and 12^th grade), students present their entire academic portfolio to a panel of experts – which might include the superintendent, school board and community members, and visiting educators (with family members in the audience). Berger describes a presentation by a Massachusetts sixth grader in which he explains that he transferred to the school at the beginning of the year and had to catch up in math and writing; describes an in-depth, multi-week problem that he worked on with three classmates; presents his winning entry to a math contest; demonstrates his reading, writing, and research skills in a series of projects on the architecture of ancient civilizations; and explains two service projects: designing a playground for younger students and building a dollhouse for a homeless shelter. When students complete one of these presentations, says Berger, “there are often tears or shouts or family celebrations. The passage process elevates student learning to a new level.” Teachers plan more carefully to make sure students are successful and can explain their learning. The community is coming to watch, so the kids had better be ready!

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“When Students Lead Their Learning” by Ron Berger in Educational Leadership, March 2014 (Vol. 71, #6, online only), http://bit.ly/1mjn4GG; Berger is at rberger@elschools.org.