Presenting Parent Conferences with a Technology Twist

I know so many teachers are preparing for parent teacher conferences in the current and coming weeks, and while I am a HUGE believer in conducting Student Led Parent Conferences for students in grades 2 and up (they need to be fluent readers to carry out my program below), I also thought of a neat way for teachers and/or students to bring conferences out of the dark ages and into the 21st century!

PowerPoint is a wonderful program to prepare digital portfolios, but I also love really how easy it is to use pre-made templates at Canva.

Creating a Presentation from a Student Data Template

I know making 30 or more slideshow presentations for all students in you class sounds overwhelming, but if you use the same template for each, then it really is a matter of swapping out the data in each.

In fact, students can even do it for you!

First, I like to begin by grabbing this handy Parent Conference Slideshow Planning Page.

I fill one out for each student, which gets used each quarter, so you aren’t starting over from scratch each time!

Next, head to Canva and find a presentation template you like in their template library.

*Note: Canva is free to use, but there are also premium templates for paying customers. You will see those with a little crown in the corner. If you already have a paid account, you can use anything. If you prefer to stick to the free choices (which there are oodles), then steer clear of the crowns.

I quickly found a template by typing “parent conference” in the search bar and then selecting presentations in the left column. So easy!

I quickly make a mockup of a sample conference slideshow that could be used with the data from your planning page from above.

Title Slide:

Final Grades for Each Quarter – You can always edit the chart to reflect all your subjects and/or different marking periods:

An easy way to show benchmarks in either reading, math, or both:

Having a Daily Class Schedule slide helps the caregiver see exactly what the student is doing when throughout the day:

A Specials page helps to get the specials teachers involved in the conference as well since they are not typically capable of attending each and every student conference:

I love that this slide can be customized where the student picks his or her own accomplishments from the last marking period:

A handy chart for parents to see some data about reading to children at home (or this could be a checklist of ways to incorporate math into daily life, etc.):

Some extra help resources online:

Student and Teacher Goals for the next grading period – This is a wonderful way to have meaningful conversations one-on-one with students and talk about setting goals that aren’t too easy OR too hard:

Wrap up with a Thank You page

Fancying Up Your Parent Teacher Conference Slideshow

Now that you have the basic template, you just need to have the data input into the slides.

If you have littles, this is probably best done by you and any assistants you may have.

But if your students are old enough, you could knock this out in an hour all at once by having the students pull up the slides themselves in the computer lab and one by one you go through each slide as a class and change the relevant info.

And then the hard part is done!

If you want to take it a step further, students could even change the colors in their slideshow and or add transitions. And Canva makes that part super easy too!

You can quickly go from a typical boring static presentation to one that stands out with animated words and pictures just by click a few extra buttons.

Now you can proudly host those parent conferences quickly and without a hundred papers to sift and sort through each time. In fact – the students could even be hosting their own conference by using the presentation.

You can even have the parent email the presentation to their own email if they want a copy too.

How do you conduct “parent conferences out of the box”?  We would love to hear your great ideas in the comments below as well!

Would you like the Planning Page mentioned above? Grab it below.

Click here to email your freebie

Happy Conferencing!

~Charity