Notebooking, Teaching, and Technology

With parent/teacher conferences coming up, you can use https://calendly.com/ to manage your conference schedule (and it is FREE!!!). Using Calendly will allow you to create a calendar where parents can view and sign up for available time slots online (none of that dreaded paper and shuffling of time slots).  Parents receive email confirmations and have the option to add the appointment to their personal calendar. For an overview of how to set up a calendar in Calendly for parent conferences, please watch this short, step-by-step video (please note that I used the dates of Oct. 20 and 21st as a reference point since those are the dates for our district) - https://goo.gl/RUwZHh   Looking for a quick parent/teacher conference checklist? Check out this form on Google Docs . The list is a reminder of what might be covered during a conference; please feel free to change the form to meet your needs.     Have student’s evaluate themselves and use the...

With parent/teacher conferences coming up you can use Google Docs to manage your conference schedule. Using Google Docs will allow you to create a schedule template where parents can view and sign up for available time slots online (none of that dreaded paper and shuffling of time slots).  Please note you will need to still manage it and send out confirmations.  I put the time slots into 20 minute increments. Our district has late conferences the Thursday and gives students a day off school on Friday for teachers to meet with parents. I usually tried to get all my parents in before the Friday so I could spend that day catching up on classroom "stuff" (we weren't allowed to have it off if we were done). The template is geared with the district schedule in mind but you should be able to edit it easily. If you are interested in trying it out this year I created a signup template that you can import into your Google Docs -  Parent Teacher Sign Up Form Link...

Parent teacher conferences are coming up here in our district (October). Pictured above are two forms I would always have during those conferences.  The first is a student self-evaluation form. It is a two page document (only one page shown above) where they rate themselves with easy to fill in faces (first page) and then write answers to questions on page two (i.e. what do you like about coming to school, what is an area you do well in, what is an area you need to improve in, etc.). Children are remarkably honest on these forms and it helps guide the conference. One year I had a child say that they needed to work on their anger management issues (which was true but I wasn't sure how to bring it up to the parents!).  The second was a conference checklist. Inevitably I would forget something and it would annoy me so I developed the checklist to help me remember. I would make parents sign it for my records and cut off the bottom part for them (it contained ...