Math Journals and Parent Conferences

Over the years I have gotten slightly more comfortable with parent conferences. And by slightly I mean, well, seriously a small amount. I am so much more comfortable conversing with my sixth graders. I have nightmares about parents coming in and yelling at me, even though they have been mostly calm since the first day of school. I'm sure everything will go well, at the middle level they are so concerned about their children making friends that we can use the conference time to reassure and comfort. My intern and my advisory partner will be there to help, which will be wonderful to have another set of eyes and ears in case I miss something.

In order to prepare for conferences our students create goals. While they do not attend the conference, we do like to share their goals with their families. Most of the time everyone agrees on what has to be worked on. I also like to sit and type up some strengths, concerns, and/or goals for the children based on our observations in the classroom. With 15 minutes to meet each parent it certainly goes fast. I'll keep you posted on how they go. If you have conferences coming up soon, either as the teacher or the parent, please be kind :)

My projects today, I think, are a distraction from the above. I am loving, and I mean LOVING doing the math journals and stations with my students. Being a type-A planner I have math journals and standards matched up until the end of October. Here are the next two that we are going to be working on (again, Runde's Room was my resource for all of these ideas).

Equivalent Fractions

The week of Halloween - they will use them to explain fraction operations.

Happy weekend everyone! I hope you have time to do what you want, even if that means sitting and coloring math journals :) Let me know if you have questions about anything you see.