Dear Parents, Your child has been developing this portfolio as evidence of their personal, social and academic development and preparing for the discussion they will soon have with you. The following outlines the roles you each play in that discussion, in order to meet the intended outcome for everyone. Role of Child • Remember that you are the learner so you are in charge of the organization of the time and place and of the discussion itself
• Make an appointment with your parents so they set time aside for you to discuss your learning. Agree on where the discussion will occur so it is somewhere you are not distracted.
• Have your portfolio in front of you during the conference, either the digital version, the binder or both.
• Begin by explaining that you will share your social, personal and academic development and that you will use your portfolio as evidence to support what you are saying.
• Be honest by sharing everything about your learning journey: your achievements, proud moments, challenges, struggles, the areas you need to work on, your commitment, your concerns, your attitudes, the attributes of the Learner Profile you demonstrate.
• Summarize yourself as a learner. • Share any goals you have been working on so far and review how they are progressing. • Suggest some goals you need to work towards achieving so that you make further progress. They need to be realistic and achievable, not too big.
• Listen to the goals that your parents see as needing to be a focus for you. • Reach an agreement with your parents and prioritize the goals. Discuss strategies that you can put in place to help you reach each goal. This list should be written on a the goal sheet (either digitally or on paper) and then taken to your Learning Review to be shared with your teacher who will then also make suggestions.
• Thank your parents for helping you on your learning journey.
Role of Parents
• Make this discussion a special time for your child so they look forward to sharing their learning with you.
• Set a special time aside when there will be no distractions, perhaps in a place outside of your
home.
• Approach the discussion with an open and positive frame of mind. • Empower your child to lead the discussion prompting with questions if need be (see suggested question prompts).
• • • • •
Listen to his/her point of view. Maintain a realistic perspective of your child's abilities. Celebrate achievement and progress. Acknowledge areas needing to be improved. Allow your child to suggest realistic and measurable goals based on their personal needs. These could be social or personal goals that may help their academic progress or interactions with others. They should be quite specific.
• Suggest goals you would like to add and then together prioritize the final list. • Before you finish the discussion ensure your child feels you are working in partnership with them so they will be successful learners.
• Ensure your child takes his/her portfolio and list of goals to their Learning Review. We hope you all find this an enjoyable and rewarding experience. Best regards Thomas Woods Pauline DooletteCox PYP Coordinators
QUESTION PROMPTS
Learning and the Learning Process Tell me all about yourself as a learner How is the way you learn different to others in your class? What hinders your learning? What helps you to learn better? What is your personal learning style? What is something you really enjoyed doing? Why? In which ways has/have your learning/attitudes/values/behaviour changed? What are your strengths as a learner? What are you most proud of? Where have you shown the greatest progress? What has been a struggle for you? What has been challenging? How have you reacted to the challenge? Describe your attitude to your learning – committed, engaged, disinterested etc Which attributes of the Learner Profile to you demonstrate the most? How do you demonstrate these? Which attributes of the Learner Profile to you demonstrate the least? How could you improve on these? Question Prompts – Future Plans and Setting Goals How are you progressing towards your goals? What would you like to be able to achieve? What do you now need to do? What do you need to do first, next? What strategies can you put in place to achieve this? How can we support you? What will you do if you can’t…?