Parent Teacher Interviews

Last week was parent-teacher interviews and I was able to sit in a on a few to see how this is all done. I have sat in on interviews before, but these ones were a little different.

I remember sitting in Nola Aitken's class for Ed on Assessment and watching a video on portfolios. I also remember thinking how great of an idea it was, a place to showcase students work and that it would be marvelous if we could all have that in our classrooms. Of course, we talked about it for a bit as a class and came to the conclusion, that yes, it is most definitely worth the time and the effort.

However, going into the schools was another story. Neither of my TA's that I had for PSI or PSII did portfolios so I did not have a chance to see them "in action." It is now that I realize, that it is only with the support of the entire school that my TA's could have used portfolios.

So, back to parent-teacher interviews. It was here that I saw how truly useful it is to show parents in a neatly and timely fashion, how their kids are doing. Right from day one, Paparoa spends the first few weeks gathering individual writing samples, reading levels, ability to understand blends in sounds, math skills, and much more. Once all of these results are accumulated, they are added to the portfolios, shown to the parents, and the parents can see straight from scores and Tanya's expalanation, where their child is sitting. It sounds simple, but it takes hours of work to get the sampling and testing done, then to grade it, put it on a scale so the parents can see and then gather everything into each individual portflio.

But this is only possible because students are started with their own portfolio as soon as they start school and they are passed from teacher to teacher after that. It is such an excellent way to show and view progress that it now seems useless to me to host the same type of interviews that I have seen at home; the ones that say 'oh, your child is doing well, needs some work on reading." With portfolios, parents can see for themselves that extra work needs to be done because the test scores are there to prove it. Although it may seem like a lot of testing, students understand that it is to go in their portfolios so that they can also see their own improvements. The tests are not seen as a big deal and students know that it is for their own benefit. And when portfolios are sent home, parents write a comment about their child's work and effort and the students get to write and say what they are most proud of themselves for doing.

I truly believe that this is such a great and unique way of assessing but also a wonderful teaching tool because it is a place where students can see for themselves how much they have improved and that their hard work has indeed paid off.

Kiwis just know what they're doing!