3 Way Conferences – An Authentic Discussion

The mysterious 3 Way Conferences between parent, teacher, and student. If you were wondering how to make this a meaningful conference, well here is your guide. It is a transformative practice for your teaching, one you won’t regret.

My Journey to 3 Way Conferences

The dreaded parent teacher conference. Is that your sentiment? It was mine for a while! Especially as a new teacher. I always became so anxious anytime I had to meet with parents. I mostly was nervous I wouldn’t be able to answer a question about how their kids are doing, and mostly nervous I had no idea what I was doing as a teacher!

But here we are 10+ years later and parents are not so scary anymore. But that doesn’t mean I like parent teacher meetings! I wanted to shift this year. I knew in my heart that I had to get the students involved. It makes perfect sense that the student who is the center of the learning, should be present to explain how they are doing in class.

So for the first parent teacher conferences of the year, I switched things up. I asked the students to attend the conferences as well. Then I realized I had no idea what we would talk about for 15 minutes…

The Self-Evaluation

student self evaluationFor this meeting, I knew we needed to skeleton to frame the conversation. It is the first few weeks of school, and we do not have much academics to report on. However, we have spent 5 weeks working on classroom routines and social-emotional learning. At this time of year our school traditionally did an interim report to parents that talks about work habits, attitudes and behaviour in the classroom. I figured I could combine all of these ideas into the conference and save my time writing an interim report.

So I got to work and created my quick student self-evaluation. I incorporated growth mindset language, with an arrow that has two ends: I’m still working on it –> this is my strength!

Then I wrote I statement descriptors for different behaviours in my room.

  • I know the classroom routines
  • I make good learning choices
  • I work hard on my writing
  • etc.

student self evaluationWhen the families entered the room, I had all of us sit around a circle table. I gave the student the sheet with the arrow. I handed them one descriptor sentence at a time and asked them to place the card on the arrow. Then the magic happened!

When they were finished, I asked the students based of this and their year so far, what goals did they have for themselves for the year. Parents helped a lot with this question, and for each student I have one or two meaningful goals for their school year created.

Outcomes of the 3 Way Conferences

First off, students were bang on with all their descriptors. If I ever felt it was not right, I asked them, “why did you put that there?” They were always able to tell me with clear examples. I realized I had filled out their interim report checklist, I would have had it wrong. The kids know how hard they are working, how well they are getting along with peers and I can’t keep track of that many kids!

Secondly, the parents LOVED it! I have never had so many positive comments from parents about a conference. They told me their child thought they were struggling, but afterwards, they were able to point out how many strengths they had. Parents wanted to make one for home as a check in for their kids. Every parent left the meeting with authentic information about how their kid is doing with the important stuff (behaviour, work habits etc.)

Thirdly, I learned new things about my students. I learned who was struggling with a peer that I didn’t know anything about. I learned who was actually trying really hard to stay focused and just couldn’t. We have since made some adjustments for that child. I learned who has grown in their math confidence. The 3 Way Conferences were a beautiful thing.

How to do this yourself!

3 way conference student self evaluationI have posted a free editable template for this conference in my TPT store. I made it free because I really do think that every teacher should be doing conferences this way – it is so powerful! It is fully editable because every classroom is different and you might want to have different talking points than I do.

Where will I go from here?

I am hoping to incorporate this system going forward all year for conferences. I am hoping our first one is a baseline for my students and I hope to see what growth we can see in the future. I have posted the goals for each student and periodically I am going to ask them to reflect on how they are doing with them.

I think that now that this self-evaluation has been done once with parents, I can either save it for the next conferences or complete it with my students myself. It is hard to get every parent in for a meeting multiple times per year. But now that they know the process, I may have students complete the evaluation and send it home for parents to see. It is a journey and this is the beginning!

Have you ever done 3 way conferences? How did it go for you! Good luck on your journey.

♥ Cassandra

PS. If you are from BC (like me), you can edit much of the language to resemble the I statements from the Core Competencies and then you have a very meaningful core competency self evaluation. Just another way to bring that language into your classroom and get your students talking about the core competencies!

If you want to know more about how I structure my classroom check out this post:

3 classroom routines

Leave a Reply