Your Complete Guide to Stress-Free Conferences
What do you say in a parent teacher conference? Whether your conferences are in-person or over video, you'll want to follow this guide to make sure your conferences are effective.
Parent teacher conferences are always a little overwhelming no matter if you’re a brand new teacher or an experienced one.
How do you organize conferences? What do you say in a parent teacher conference? Do you have enough data to show parents? What kind of action plan should you give parents?
I was overwhelmed every year before and during conference week until I started using parent teacher conference templates in Google Slides.
Now I just customize a presentation for each student and all I have to do is follow the slideshow during the conference.
No more forgetting what to talk about or feeling unprepared.
Plus I show parents their child’s reflection slideshow. There’s plenty to talk about!
How do you schedule a parent teacher conference?
First things first, ditch the paper.
I’ve been using digital conference sign-ups for years. You simply share the Google Slides link with parents and they sign-up for one of your time slots. No more asking parents for their top 3 choices or sending individual reminders to parents. It’s so easy, just share the link in your class email.
In the email, you can also link the included pre-conference parent questionnaire. This is a good way for parents to bring up any concerns they have before the conference. You can prepare your answers to their concerns ahead of time, instead of being thrown-off during the conference.
What should be included in a parent teacher conference?
This year I’ve found a really easy way to make sure I’m organized for each actual conference, too. I’ve created conference slides for each student where I’ve filled in their academic strengths and goals, behavior and work habits, test scores, and more. It’s actually helped me become more prepared for conferences.
During the in-person or virtual conference, I follow the slides as I share my screen with parents. There’s even an “Action Plan” that we co-create together as a recap of the conference so parents know how they can help at home, and I can remember the tasks I need to complete after the conference is over.
Did I mention I can share this copy with parents just by sharing the link with them after the conference?
If you’re into student-led conferences or want students to share about themselves, but don’t necessarily want them to join the conference, I’ve also included student reflection slides where they tell about how they like school, their strengths and goals, their friends, and they can even link digital work that they’re really proud of. Students can present the slides themselves or you can share them.
Parents love seeing these!
Quick Overview
Here’s how I’m using all of the these parent-teacher conference forms and materials, but you can use any or all of the following:
- Customize the Conference Sign-Up and Pre-Conference Parent Questionnaire and email parents the links to fill out.
- Share the Student Reflection slides in Google Classroom for each student to complete. They’ll reflect on their feelings about school, their strengths and goals, behavior and work habits, and they can even link digital work that they’re proud of.
- Customize the Conference Slides and make a copy for each student. Fill in each student’s strengths, goals, work habits, test scores, links to work, and more.
- Project the Conference Slides during the conference to guide your discussion and update parents on their child’s progress. Share the Student Reflection slides or have students attend the conference and share themselves.
- After the conference, share the Conference Slides link with parents and remind them to follow the “how to help at home” part of the Action Plan that was co-created during the conference.
Everything included is 100% EDITABLE:
- Conference Sign-Up in Google Slides (Parents sign-up for one time slot on the slide)
- Pre-Conference Parent/Guardian Questionnaire in Google Forms
- Student Reflection Google Slides Presentation
- Conference Slides to fill out for each student and project during the conference (welcome slide, agenda, academics, behavior, action plan, parent concerns, notes, more)
- Organization Checklist in Google Sheets
- Step-by-step instructions for using each resource to run your virtual conferences stress-free
This product made me almost look forward to conferences. I’ve never had an easier time creating a conference sign-up. Using Google Slides for it was seamless. It was also easy to customize a slideshow for each parent that allowed me to show them their child’s work and give them goals for the next semester. What I like the best about it is the ability to link their pieces from Google to highlight their work from the semester. The parents really appreciated having a copy of everything they needed to go and help their child. I can easily give this product 5 stars with no hesitation.
Charles, 4th Grade Teacher
While I did not have enough time to incorporate every part of this amazing resource, I was able to use several parts of it. It really helped me organize my thoughts so I was able to bring up the strengths and challenges for each student during conference time. I wish that I had more time to prepare so that I could use all of this, because really, it was thorough and perfect.
Victoria, Teacher
I seriously have not been more prepared for PT conferences. Doing virtual conferences was overwhelming to think about, but this resource made the process comprehensive and seamless. The parents were so impressed with the amount of information I was able to report on in such a concise way. The conference sign up page helped me keep all my appointments together in one place so I could stay on time and meet with each parent. Thank you for this!!!
Rachael, 3rd, 4th, and 5th Grade Teacher
Great product! We have meetings with families every quarter and this is a great way to guide our meetings and ensure we are sharing up to date progress on their student’s performance. I loved the variety of slides that were available to use and that I can update the slides for each of the meetings!
Kara, 4th, 5th, and 6th Grade Teacher
I’m extremely happy with this purchase. I am a first year teacher and this is exactly what I needed to guide me through conferences.
Andrea, 5th Grade Teacher
This is a fantastic product! I love that it is editable and has so many usable features! This is something I will use again and again for parent-teacher conferences! I encouraged my coworkers to purchase – it’s that good!
Jessica, Teacher
I loved how customizable these slides were! They made my conferences flow and stay within the time limits I set for them. Parents were able to see the information (via zoom) clearly and succinctly. I plan to use these for the following years!
Jasmine, 5th and 6th Grade Teacher
This was bought used and sent the day before parent conferences. I loved the materials ( pre conference survey and google slide presentation) for virtual parent teacher conferences. I felt polished, prepped and prepared in under 30 min. Thank you so much! I set the agenda, pasted in student progress reports and was ready. So simple and easy to modify.
