Guiding Kids to Talk to Parents About Their Assignments

Every teacher has needed to speak with a child’s parent or guardian at one time or another. While these conversations can often be accompanied by angst, educators recognize the importance of the partnerships forged between home and school in supporting the success of the whole child. These conversations are more beneficial when they are not “incident reports” but rather productive dialogues communicating students’ accomplishments and goals while providing parents with the strategies and tools to help students achieve individually outlined targets.

I‘ve found that including students in these conversations with parents and guardians, as well as providing students with the opportunity to develop their own personal goals for academic progress, facilitated a stronger partnership between home and school. Including the child as an active member in the conversation increased family engagement, fostered student growth, and enabled a stronger collaborative effort. Additionally, the process of periodic reflection and goal setting itself is an important skill and process for the students to learn and with which to engage.

How to Make Reflection Part of Students’ Routines

Helping my students engage in reflection was the first challenge. In order to reflect, they needed to gather and keep a record of their data. Students used a template stapled inside their portfolio that housed their various assessments each marking period. I developed this student assessment record template for my middle school math class. (Note: Assessment categories are prescribed by the district.) You can modify the template for your particular grade levels and content areas.

Examples of differentiation include providing numeric or symbolic rating scales, including sentence stems and word banks, allowing students to draw ways to accomplish their goals, and scaffolding or reducing the information you ask them to record. You can provide a printout of scores (if your online grade book has this reporting feature) and then have students complete their reflection.

Most of my students had not engaged in a process like the one I was presenting, so like any new skill, it involved intentional planning and teaching—modeling, examples, and opportunities for practice. The first question most educators will ask is, “When do I have time for this?”

Well-planned mini-lessons with strategically placed practice opportunities that lead to students’ independent application is time well spent. You’ll get a return on your investment for student participation, student agency, and parent engagement. When I was planning my lessons and long-range planning around a month before the close of the marking period, I would design for 10–15 minutes a few times a week leading up to the application for students to rehearse.

My students reflected at the end of each marking period. This created a natural breaking point and opportunity for them to implement their new goal. Since report cards would soon be published online, it was an opportune time to initiate a dialogue between home and school, facilitated by the students. A study by the Midwest Comprehensive Center demonstrates that student-led goal setting positively increases their motivation, engagement, and academic performance.

As per the previously mentioned study, it’s important to understand that “goal setting in isolation cannot be assumed to produce positive outcomes for students…the outcomes associated with student goal setting will vary depending on how educators design and implement their goal-setting strategies.“

This is one reason that I nested the reflection cycle and goal-setting strategy within this strategic twist on student-facilitated conferences. Reflection and goal setting was a new endeavor for my students, and I was aware that their participation and the dialogue with families would be a new experience for most of the households of my students. In order to set them up for success, I provided a framework to help students and parents to engage in productive discussions when conferencing around the student-developed grades and goals.

How to Facilitate Positive and Productive Family Conversations

I wanted the conversations about grades to be a productive experience for students and their families. I hoped that students would have an opportunity to share their grades, their progress, the challenges they identified, and the steps they would take for continuous improvement. In this way, my students were empowered to self-advocate.

My next goal was for the families to engage with their children and discuss how they could work together and achieve these student-designed goals so that the time at home was more discussion based and less “homework.”

Sharing question stems as suggestions can help families who may want to use them. They can also help relieve anxieties that students might have about initiating and carrying out the conversation.

For students: This marking period, I was successful with _____. I know I was successful with _____ because _____ (could be data or applying strategies that students determined would meet the goal). My goal for the next marking period is to improve in _____. I believe this is a good goal because _____. My strategies for achieving this goal are _____. I may need support in achieving this goal by/with _____.

For parents: Thank you for sharing your goals with me. I am proud/appreciate how hard you worked this marking period and that you want to continue to improve in _____. (Start by affirming and affirm student’s choices.) Your goal for the next marking period is a good one because _____. I can support you with those strategies by _____. _____ (people, programs, materials) are resources at school that will help you reach these goals. Do you know how to access them? Are there strategies you tried that you found are not helpful for you? (These are just a few examples.)

Families certainly may want to probe further and ask questions; however, the focus is on growth and processes over just grades. A growth mindset is key.

It was important to me to provide the groundwork for success early on. This wasn’t a surprise to families. I introduced the student reflection, the goals, and the home-based student-led conference during Back to School Night (with the initial examples and stems). I built an even stronger foundation for these conversations by sending periodic email blasts to families throughout the term.

Will every family embrace this idea or have the time to engage in this dialogue the way we’ve designed it? The answer to that question will differ from year to year, classroom to classroom, and teacher to teacher. We meet students where they are, and we do the same with families. These conversations will look different in each household. Some conferences may be a sit-down meeting, some might happen in the car on the way to or from school or a sporting event.

The connection, the dialogue, and the students’ agency are the most important components of this activity, and that is what I stress to families. Students benefit when they see the partnership between home and school knowing that “all the adults in the room” care, are on their side, and communicate with each other. Include students as partners, and you’ll see this communication improve. Making students part of the conversation improves engagement and motivation in learning and fosters a stronger sense of agency in their own education.