Parent Teacher Conferences

Hi Everyone! We're officially done with 1/4 of the school year. Here in Hawaii, we have a Fall break and we've just returned back to school this past week for 3 days (with students). I must say, the break was wonderful! I had some time to relax and gain back some of my sanity! My hubby and I were so lucky to win a FREE 2 night stay at a hotel in Waikiki (from a wedding workshop we had attended). 

We had a chance to hit the beach quite a bit, and enjoy lots of yummy cocktails with that beautiful sunset. If you're ever visiting Oahu and need suggestions of places to eat, definitely shoot me an e-mail. I am a foodie at heart and as my mom says, I live to eat! Waikiki has a ton of GREAT Happy Hour Specials running, so we definitely took advantage of that :D 

I decided to take a break from prepping for my parent teacher conferences to write a quick post to share some ideas with you of how I conduct conferences. 

To this day, I still get a little nervous before each conference (some more than others) :P but once I get started, I'm fine. For those of you who are first year teachers, always remember that parents are probably just as nervous or even more nervous that you are to hear what you have to say. I always try to stick to 2 positives for every need area that I share. This helps parents to understand that we are here to help their child, love their child and see good in them; rather than as mean teachers who are picking on their child. 

About a week before conferences, I will send home a questionnaire to parents along with a conference sign up sheet.

This questionnaire helps me to get a better idea of some important points to discuss during conferences. It's also interesting to see what parents see as their child's areas of strengths and needs. 

I also send home a reminder to parents with their conference date and time and staple it to the questionnaire sheet.

This past summer, I used Vistaprint to create business cards that I use as conference reminders. Vistaprint has some great specials that they run quite often, you can score a ton of freebies with some of their promos. Groupon also offers deals on Vistaprint as well. Check out this post for more ideas of how to use Vistaprint in the classroom. 

When you order the business cards you get a box full of cards. I will probably be using these cards for the next couple years (I believe you get 250 cards in one order). 

I also prep for each individual conference by filling out sheets like this for each student. 

I use this sheet as a guide to conduct each conference. I like to pull student work samples that support my strength and needs column. Parents love to see work their child does in school, especially writing and cute projects! It's always important to pull data and student work samples to support anything that you are sharing as a need the child needs to work on. 

By the time I've covered all the major talking points on this sheet, my conference time is usually up. At the end, I like to have parents take the time to write a positive and encouraging note to their child. 

At the ending of conferences, I like to send these out to students :) They love reading their notes from their parents. Many of them will hold on to it for the entire school year! That's pretty impressive considering that some of them manage to conveniently lose their homework and in class assignments all the time.

Some teachers like to give a little THank You gift to parents. Here are some cute ideas found on Pinterest. 

If you can't read the little leaf it says: An Apple for the teacher is really nothing new. Except when you remember Parents are teachers too!

This one cracked me up! Some of these pins were uploaded by a user, so I just linked back to the original pin I found this image from :) Click each picture to go back to the link. 

Thanks for stopping by! If you're interested in any of the forms that I use for conferences, check out my Parent Teacher Conference Pack in my TPT Store. I'll have it on Sale until the 31st, when my PT Conferences end :) 

Good luck with conferences!

Vistaprint Addict!!

For those of you who have never heard of Vistaprint...you must check it out! Let me warn you though, you will probably get sucked in and addicted like me. I can spend hours on that darn site creating things to use in my classroom. This is a website where you can pretty much create anything and everything for your classroom...magnets, business cards, banners, t-shirts, hats, pens, and the list goes on! 

I try not to order unless there is a really good sale going in. They usually send e-mails about their latest sales..and they usually happen pretty often too. There are also groupons every once awhile. I feel that you can get extremely good deals on this site....but shipping (for me) is always the killer. Not sure if it's because I live in Hawaii...or if shipping is outrageous no matter where you live?! 

SO for those of you who are looking for some new Vistaprint inspirations or just curious to see how I use VP in my classroom...you are in the right place today, my friend. 

This is probably one of my most frequent orders. I will purchase return address labels for this order and use them to label all of the books in my class library. They have a ton of cute designs too!!

This is one of my most recent creations. I used a business card for this and plan on using it to send home or staple in students planners when we have a parent/teacher conference. I won't need to worry about printing anything or writing a note in students planners. All I'll need to do is grab one of these cards..write the date and time and students name.

I'm really not sure on the pricing of all these products because they always vary depending on what kind of sale and or promotion they are running. I will recommend to not ever buy things at regular price. Wait till there's some kind of sale or promotion going on. I believe you get about 250 business cards...and if I'm not mistaken I may have got a set for free before too. 

This is another way that you could use the business cards. On each child's birthday..they get a birthday lei, a pencil and a homework pass! 

These are address labels (I believe) or small stickers..can't really remember.

My class library has really grown over the past 3 years. I now have nearly 1000 books in my library. I have three tricks that have helped me. 

The first is shopping at garage sales. I was finding books in amazing condition that would range anywhere from 10-50 cents a piece. There were books that cost $1.00 but I was cheap and usually wouldn't get it unless it was a hardcover :P (Now I'm spoiled and think that even the scholastic warehouse sales are expensive!) 

The second way my library has grown has been ordering books through scholastic with points.

And the third way is with these bad boys up above. When students borrow books from my library they notice that some of the books have these stickers instead of my "This book belongs to: Miss Mizufuka" sticker. I'll usually have a few kids ask about it. I then tell them that they are welcome to donate books to our class library that they are no longer going to read (and if it's okay with their parents). Most of them get so excited because they really want to have a 'plaque' in one of the library books that will stay in my library forever. Most kids will bring in a few books...some even bring in boxes and bags full of books!

Here are two more that I have....

 Under this sign I write the kids' "what to do" list. Below is where all of their assignments and page numbers are normally listed. 

I also order small car door magnets that go up on my front whiteboard. These are for things that are written up on the board on a weekly basis and always have a 'spot' 

 You can also get personalized post-its. 

The options are really unlimited with Vistaprint...These are some of my favorites that I have created on the site and use all the time in my own classroom. I hope I sparked some interest and creativity for you...now go and check the site out.... You know you want to!!

Have a great day!