Preparing Meaningful Comments for Parent-Teacher Conferences 

There are so many things to prepare for conferences! From assessment reports to work samples and report cards, it takes a lot of time to get everything ready to meet with parents and families. That’s why the thought of preparing additional written feedback can seem overwhelming. In this post, I’m sharing tips and resources to help you prepare meaningful comments for parent-teacher conferences without the stress!

Preparing Parent-Teacher Conference Comments in Advance

When you already have a stack of paperwork to share with families during conference time, you might be wondering if it’s necessary to include additional written feedback. However, it really is a good idea to prepare comments for parent-teacher conferences. Here are just a few ways that they can help you have a more successful experience as you meet with parents:

• Focus Discussion: Written comments can be a helpful reminder of what you’d like to discuss with parents. This can keep your conferences focused and on track, which is important when you have back-to-back conferences!
• Build Partnerships: When parents can see that you’ve taken the time to prepare thoughtful feedback about their child, it gives them additional evidence of your care and professionalism. This can help to support the partnership you’re trying to build with parents.
• Reduce Stress: Having written comments prepared in advance can reduce stress for both you and the families of your students. You don’t have to stress about remembering everything you want to share, and they don’t have to worry about remembering all of the information they’re hearing about their child at once. 
• Document Growth: Written comments can be helpful to reference later in the school year. This can help as you look for patterns of growth over the course of the year. Even though you can find growth data in assessment reports, your written comments can provide much-needed context about the student’s classroom performance.

How to Prepare Comments for Parent Conferences

I wanted to help you save some time on preparing written comments for conferences, so I’ve put together a list of five things that can make the process easier.

1. Give Students a Self-Assessment

This might seem like just one more thing to do before conferences, but a student self-assessment is a very helpful source of information. You can use this as a springboard for what you’d like to focus on with your written comments. If your student has a concern about an aspect of their classroom performance, you could focus your constructive comments on that topic.

2. Ask for Parent Input in Advance

Gathering parent feedback prior to conferences is such an important part of preparation! This can give parents time to think about their questions and concerns without being put on the spot. You are much more likely to get genuine feedback from parents when you ask for their input in advance. Plus, it gives you time to prepare your answers to their questions.

Once you’ve gathered this parent input, you can use it as a guide as you prepare written comments for conferences. You can make sure that you’re addressing parent questions and concerns in those written responses. This is also helpful because parents will then have that to reference later.

3. Gather Other Student Data

You’re already gathering student data to share with parents, so you might as well use it to help you write meaningful comments! While assessments are helpful for parents to see where their students stand in their literacy and math skills, it’s much more beneficial for them to hear from you about what those graphs and numbers actually mean. You could reference the data in your written comments and then give a brief description of what those results mean for the individual student. Are they right on track? Are there particular skills that the student needs more help with?

4. Use a Glow and Grow Framework

By now, you might be thinking that these written comments are going to be pages long with all of the information you’ve gathered! You don’t have to write the equivalent of a novel to prepare meaningful comments with parents. Instead, you can use a streamlined glow and grow framework to share your thoughts with parents.

You can use the information and data you’ve gathered to organize your thoughts into things that are going well for the student (glow) and then areas of improvement (grow). Be sure that you have more glows and grows! This format makes it easy to work down the list and guide your discussion when you actually sit down to meet with parents.

5. Include Actionable Suggestions

The final thing that you’ll want to do when preparing written feedback is to think of actionable suggestions that families can work on at home. Encouraging families to continue reading together at home is always a great suggestion, but it’s even more meaningful to give families suggestions about the specific areas of growth that you identified in your written comments and the areas of concern they shared with you. 

When parents see that you’re suggesting something specific for their child to work on, they are more likely to spend time on it at home.

Printable Parent-Teacher Conference Forms

I have put together a set of time-saving forms that will help you prepare comments for parent-teacher conferences. This set of conference forms makes it easy to collect student self-assessments and parent concerns prior to conference. There is also an editable template for preparing comments and suggestions in a glow and grow format. You can type directly into the form, so you can save some time on your conference prep!

If you’d like to take a closer look at all of the forms included in this set, just click below to find it in the Teaching Exceptional Kinders shop or in my TPT store.

Save These Tips for Preparing Comments for Parent Teacher Conferences

Be sure to save this post so you can come back to it later! Just add the pin below to your favorite Pinterest board of kindergarten teacher ideas. You’ll be able to quickly find these tips and ideas when you’re feeling overwhelmed at the thought of preparing written comments for parent-teacher conferences.