Taking a Risk on Unit Conferencing (1/2)

Do you ever just need a breath? As teachers, we can all appreciate the craziness that is our lives, as we often fluctuate between moments of (relative) bliss and periods characterized by piles of marking and supplemental duties. During those more stressful times, a libation – or four – may accompany that breath. For me, one of those piles mounted two weeks ago, as marking, on top of 70-plus parent-teacher interviews, occupied my Friday and Saturday. As such, you can also appreciate that when it came time to blog, I choose to breathe instead.

With that in mind, parent-teacher interviews are done and unit conferences in my classroom are commenced! For those not familiar with the term ‘unit conference’, I’ll give a quick rundown. This is essentially a one-on-one conversation that takes place at the end of a unit between a teacher and a learner wherein the student discusses the learning that has taken place.

Last year, this concept was completely foreign to me, and it wasn’t until after I had a conversation with an innovate colleague and fellow Cohorter, Matt Murray, that I began considering the implementation of this practice into my teaching. Matt spoke about how he was having students reflect on their mastery of curriculum standards in his math class. Through these conferences, he said, students would evaluate their perceived mastery of specific skills and would offer an explanation for their self-rating.

From the onset of having this conversation, I knew that I wanted to try something similar in my classroom, as it seemed like an excellent way to get kids to be reflective and, quite frankly, to shift their mindset from marks to skills. Yet I wasn’t sure exactly what this process would entail in an English classroom, as the math model in which Matt shared with me would not seamlessly adapt in an English setting. Further, for anyone who is not familiar with the Ontario Curriculum for English, the standards are overly broad at best and extremely vague at worst.

Thanks to Matt’s model, however, I was able to craft a specific set of criteria that would be applicable for my English learners. Since this will be my first ‘go’ at unit conferencing, I expect there to be some snags along that way and room to refine my process over time. With that in mind, I’m sure that my set of criteria is likely to change and that both the student preparations and conversations themselves will become much more sound.

I’m thankful to work with such inspiring and thoughtful colleagues and to work in an environment where we are free to take risks. Is implementing something new into your teaching difficult? Yep. Does going outside your comfort zone make you vulnerable? You bet. Are those not the very risks we ask our students to take daily? Bingo. What’s next, then? Try something difficult, get outside my comfort zone, take a risk, and, oh ya, don’t forget to breathe. Let the conferencing begin.

Follow @Bjeblack and let me know if you’ve ever thought about or tried unit conferencing in your classroom!

6 thoughts on “Taking a Risk on Unit Conferencing (1/2)

  1. Awesome series of posts @bblack! Welcome to the world of the student lead conference! It is definitely a shift in the traditional paradigm! A colleague of mine and former corhort21’er @dganley would be a great person to bounce some ideas off of when it comes to next steps in pushing the student lead conference to the next level. It is also great that you have support right in your own back yard with colleagues who have used this in their own classes and have lived to tell their tales of success and what they would do the next time.

    I really love that you pointed out that we ask our students to take risks everyday…. all day. Every class our students walk into they know they are going to be asked to do something they have never done before. Multiply that by however many classes they go into in a day- that is exhausting. But, it is how they learn. It is how they acquire skills and master them. As you so perfectly point out in your post- why should we be any different? We should be modelling for our students that taking risks pays off, it helps us grow, develop new skills and gain mastery over new was to design our learning environments.

    I am looking forward to hearing about this more next weekend!
    Cheers
    Tracy

    @ashaikh @ahughes @wdarby

    1. Thanks for the kind words, @tfaucher! Great point about the amount of risks that students are asked to take daily. I consider a student who may be reserved but offers an insight in each class during the day; that’s four times they’ve stepped outside of their comfort zone. Modelling, as you say, is key, and is something I’m aiming to explore in more depth in a later post.

  2. I was so excited to read this @bblack ! This is my big blind spot in teaching. I want to do it more regularly but I have so many questions about timing, the subjective nature of assessing it, etc. and I desperately want to speak to others who are doing this successfully, i.e. you and @mmurray ! Please continue to share your practice with all of us through your blog and please don’t be alarmed if I pepper you with questions this Saturday!

    1. Feel free to ask away, @mmoore! I’m still learning, so I certainly don’t have all the answers, and your queries are thoughtful. I’ve specifically noticed that timing has been a challenge, so that’s a challenge I’m working through. In terms of subjectivity, I’ve actually found this process to be liberating as I don’t sweat the difference or try to split hairs. I use (and trust) my professional judgement and listen to student’s articulate their individual strengths and areas of need. When I’m uncertain of a specific mark, I err on the side of the student. At the end of the day, since I’m using curriculum standards anyways, I’ve found the process no more subjective than marking an essay with a rubric.

  3. Hey Brandon! This is a fantastic idea, and I’m hoping to work this into an essay-writing assignment I’ll be giving soon. Thanks for the inspiration!

Comments are disabled.