Teacher parent conference questions: Questions to Ask at Your Parent-Teacher Conference

Опубликовано: September 1, 2023 в 6:42 pm

Автор: alexxlab

Категории: Miscellaneous

Questions to Ask at Your Parent-Teacher Conference

Questions to Ask at Your Parent-Teacher ConferenceSkip to contentThis page is in English

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By Colorín Colorado

Knowing that you have to go to a parent-teacher conference may make you feel nervous, intimidated, or frustrated. You may wonder what to expect, and what is expected of you. Preparing a list of questions will help you have a productive conversation with your child’s teacher.

Understood is partnering with Colorín Colorado, the nation’s leading website providing research-based resources for educators and families of English language learners.

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Prepare a list of questions.

Prioritize your questions in case you run out of time during the conference. The following questions are examples that will help you learn more about your child’s progress in school:

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What is my child expected to learn this year?
How will this be evaluated?
What are my child’s strongest and weakest subjects?
What are some examples of these strengths and weaknesses?
Does my child hand homework in on time?
What types of tests and evaluations will my child have to take this year?
How are my child’s test-taking skills?
Is my child participating in class discussions and activities?
How are my child’s social skills?
Does my child seem happy at school?
Have you noticed any unusual behaviors?
Has my child missed any classes other than excused absences?
Do you think my child is reaching his or her potential?
What can I do at home to help support my child’s academic progress?

If your child receives special services (gifted programs, special education, English classes, speech or occupational therapy, or support for a learning disability), ask about the frequency of these services and about your child’s progress with them.

Ask for explanations of anything you don’t understand.

Listen carefully to what the teacher says. If you don’t understand something that the teacher talks about (such as an educational term or an explanation of a school policy), don’t be afraid to ask for clarification. It is important for you to understand what your child’s teacher is telling you.

Ask the most important questions early in the conference.

Ask the most important questions first as you may run out of time, especially if other parents are waiting to have their conference after yours. You can always schedule another meeting with the teacher to cover any points you didn’t cover.

This article is excerpted with permission from Colorín Colorado.

More resources

Get tips to make the most of your parent-teacher conference.
Use these two-minute parent-teacher conference surveys to help talk about your child.
Explore conversation starters to use with teachers.

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Colorín Colorado is the nation’s leading website providing research-based resources for educators and families of English language learners.

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Questions to Ask During Your Next Parent-Teacher Conference

February 3, 2022

by Little Sunshine’s Playhouse and Preschool

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Questions to Ask During Your Next Parent-Teacher Conference

Meetings can be a lot of things. They can be productive.

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They can be boring.

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They can be stressful.

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Most of the time, they are a weird combination of all three.

However, when it comes to parent-teacher conferences, everyone involved wants them to be as meaningful as possible. Unfortunately, that adds a unique kind of pressure to them. How do you share enough information in 30 minutes to make your kid’s school experience as positive as possible?

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No need to panic. At Little Sunshine’s Playhouse®, we believe that parents and teachers are partners in education. Working together is the best way to give your child the quality education they deserve, and parent-teacher conferences play an important role in that partnership.

Here is a list of questions you can ask during a parent-teacher conference that will maximize the time you have with your child’s teacher.

General Questions

What is my child like in class?
Is my child talkative or quiet?
Does my child have a favorite activity?
Are there activities s/he doesn’t care for?

Strengths & Weaknesses

What activities does my child excel at?
Which individual subjects (math, science, reading, etc.) are they good at? What subjects are they struggling in?
For areas of weakness, how are you (the teacher) adapting the lessons to help my child learn more easily?

Social/Emotional Development

Is my child’s social and emotional development typical for his/her age?
Does my child understand how to share and take turns?
Do they express empathy and concern for other people?
- If you as the parent think it’s necessary, ask about specific interactions with certain teachers and classmates.

Getting Along With Adults

Does my child know how to ask for something politely?
How do staff members respond when my child has a problem?
Does my child listen to and follow instructions?

Getting Along With Peers

Is my child more inclined to play with other kids or by themselves?
What happens during group activities? Does my child have a lot to say? Do other kids do most of the talking?
Does my child have a best friend?
Are there any kids my child doesn’t get along with?
- This is also the time where you as the parent can (and should) bring up concerns about your child’s interactions with his/her classmates if you have them.

Behavioral Issues

Has my child behaved aggressively toward any classmates? Has a classmate behaved aggressively toward my child?
If any aggressive behaviors have occurred, how did you (the teacher) respond?
Did the aggressive behavior stop after the intervention or has it persisted?
Are there some situations that tend to upset my child and trigger misbehavior more than others?

How Can You Help?

What are some activities that would support learning at home? Are there good stories to read or games to play that might help my child pick up a subject more easily?
How can I help you (the teacher) in promoting good behavior and social skills?
If there are persistent developmental or behavioral issues that don’t seem to be getting better, are there experts you (the teacher) recommend who could help?

Last Question …

The last question you ask (or maybe the first question, if you think it’s necessary) could be, “May I tell you about what’s going on at home?”

The birth of a child, the death of a family member, a recent move, divorce, illness, or a host of other life events could be a big reason why your child could be struggling at school or behaving differently. Letting your child’s teacher know about them helps them out tremendously! If your teacher knows there are certain things going on in your child’s personal life that could affect their time at school, they can adjust and find solutions. If they’re totally in the dark, they can’t effectively help your child on a day-to-day basis.

There’s no need to go into lots of detail if you don’t want to. A brief summary of the situation is all they’ll need to start. If they have follow-up questions, they’ll ask.

Parent-Teacher Conferences at Little Sunshine’s Playhouse

Little Sunshine’s Playhouse has biannual parent-teacher conferences that play a big part in encouraging parental involvement and maintaining open communication about the progress of our students.

For more details, contact a location close to you today!

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What you should definitely ask the teacher at the parent meeting

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09/19/2021 09:00

Irina Ivoilova

Parent meetings begin in schools. What questions you should definitely ask the teacher, and what you should not ask if you do not want to spoil your relationship with him.

Kirill Kukhmar/TASS

So, the parents are going to the first meeting in their lives. What do they need to know about the teacher? First, go to the official website of the school. There will definitely be information about what kind of education the teacher has, what his teaching experience is and how he improved his qualifications. All this is important.

– You should not be embarrassed if the column “education” is “pedagogical school” or “pedagogical college”. It is very good if the teacher graduated from college first, and then from the university. Pay attention to work experience. It is desirable that the teacher had at least a short experience, – Larisa Nozhichkina, a child psychologist, an expert at the Department of Pedagogical Technologies of Continuous Education at Moscow State Pedagogical University, told RG.

She gave six tips to parents of first-graders:

1. At the meeting, the first thing we ask is: what should a first-grader be able to do? Most likely, the answer will be this: tie your shoelaces, recognize your things, be able to ask to go to the toilet, know the name and patronymic of the parents.

2. We ask the teacher what the schedule of classes will be: is there an after-school program, after which lesson is breakfast, how long is the break, will they be assigned homework, how much?

3. Now children come to school with very different levels of knowledge. One already fluently reads Pushkin, the other does not even know the letters. Ask the teacher: will there be an individual approach to the student? Feel free to ask: “My child can already read, how will you keep him busy in the lesson?” And be attentive to the answer: “I will take him to the library, what should he do with everyone”, “I will make him my assistant in the lesson”, “I will put him on the last desk and give you an assignment” …

4. At the first meeting, exchange phone numbers with the teacher and immediately agree on a convenient time to call. Some teachers work double shifts or stay with the children on aftercare. Do you think that 6-7 pm is the best time to disturb the teacher? Or maybe he just finished his work day?

5. Suppose a child has a disease. Should I report this to the teacher? “My opinion is yes. If a child needs some procedures during the school day, there is a need to often leave the classroom for a toilet or medical office, say, for an injection, it is necessary to agree with the teacher on a conventional sign so as not to distract the whole class each time “, – says Larisa Nozhichkina.

6. Exchange email addresses with the teacher and see how quickly the teacher can respond. It is not unusual for a teacher to answer you in a day or two. Unless, of course, we are talking about some urgent things. If a teacher asks you to follow their Instagram page, follow them.

“Experience shows that it is better for parents to maintain business relations with the teacher, to do without personal ones. Therefore, you should not ask the teacher if she has a husband, children, in which apartment she lives – her own or rented,” the psychologist explained.

Education

The first parent-teacher meeting: what you should definitely ask your teacher about

You can learn most about your child’s future school life at the first parent-teacher meeting. True, it is not so easy to make a list of all the questions. Don’t worry, we’ve made a list of topics for you to discuss with your teacher. Check if you missed anything?

1. How will the children study?

Schools in Russia themselves determine the working hours (five or six days) and vacation schedule (once every five weeks or three times per academic year). You can study according to the familiar quarter system, by trimesters (three trimesters of three months, holidays twice, 17–18 days each, in autumn and spring) and by modules (five academic weeks and one week of vacation). Although the final grades for children are still given at the end of the trimester, and not the so-called module.

2. What time do the lessons end?

Weekly load and the maximum number of items per day – all these norms are regulated by the SanPiN resolution. The maximum load per day for the first grade is 4 lessons. The document also says that objects of different complexity must be alternated. There should not be double lessons in elementary school. But the distribution of items by week is not described there.

3. Are extended day groups paid?

Despite the fact that from this year the extension will be organized in a new way and the fee for it should be reduced, schools are allowed to set the price for parents for their child’s stay in an educational institution after school. The school has the right to reduce the amount of the specified fee or not to collect it from certain categories of parents. And don’t forget: according to the law “On Education”, a child has the right to be in school free of charge for two hours after the end of classes.

4. How many people will be in the class?

There must not be more than 25 children per class, except for compensatory education classes. But now almost every school has classes with a significant excess of this standard. According to the Constitution of the Russian Federation and the Federal Law of the Russian Federation “On Education”, everyone in our country is guaranteed the right to receive education. This means that a child who has reached a certain age and with the appropriate documents, the director is obliged to enroll in a school and thus exercise his rights guaranteed by the Constitution. In accordance with sanitary standards, the number of students in a class is determined based on the calculation of compliance with the area norm per child, compliance with the requirements for arranging furniture in classrooms, including the distance of places for classes from a light-bearing wall, requirements for natural and artificial lighting. Therefore, if the area of classrooms allows you to allocate a study place for a child, the class size can be increased.

5. Are there extracurricular activities and do I need to pay for them? And can you refuse?

Attendance at classes outside the approved curriculum is not considered mandatory, so each family has the right to determine the need for these classes and plan the child’s time.