First Parent Teacher Kinder Meeting Coming Up

[Haley'sMom]

We have the first parrent teacher kinder parent teacher meeting coming up Oct 11th. What does the teacher typicaly cover during this conference? It is 30 min? All parents of kinder students will have one.

A

[meemee]

how your child is doing academically
how they are doing socially
what are the areas they need help with
any questions you might have

my dd had emotional problems last year so the teacher spent a lot of time on us. over 45 mins. but other than that we have never had a meeting last more than 15 mins. if we had one at all. i used to volunteer so i knew what was going on so teacher and i chatted sometime during my volunteer time to check it and so we officially never had a meeting.

sometimes the meetings last 5 mins or 10 at the most.

this is a regular thing. happens twice a year i think or is it 3 for every child at every grade.

[emilysmama]

The pp pretty much summed it up.

My dd's K teacher last year showed us samples of my dd's class work. (You know, writing letters of the alphabet.) She would comment on how it was good and that the mistakes (like backward letters) were age appropriate. She had also just completed assessing the children's reading ability, and that was when she made us aware of exactly how strong a reader our dd was. (My dd couldn't read when she started K, and I knew that she made a lot of progress in the three months before the conference, but I was really shocked about how strong a reader she was and I hadn't realized it.)

She also told us whether our dd was getting along with the other children, which was useful to know because I really had no idea.

Finally, she let me ask my questions. I had a lot of questions, which is why my conference took more than the full allotted 20 minutes, but without the questions, the teacher covered everything very efficiently in 10 minutes.

The conference was very pleasant, and if anything disruptive was going on at home (new baby, divorce, etc) then it would have been a good opportunity to make the teacher aware of the situation.

The fall (november) conference, I was told not to bring my child with me. For the spring (march) conference, the teacher encouraged me to bring my dd because she knew that I would be driving from very far away and that child care would be difficult because the children get dismissed early on conference days. (My dd just sat reading a book and didn't pay attention to what was said.)

[Pepe]

Hello! I have the same question re: what to expect. When it's our turn to ask questions, I'm wondering what I should ask the teacher. emilysmama, would you be comfortable sharing what questions you asked? Though this is certainly child-specific, I think knowing what others ask would spark some ideas in my head (so other people, please chime in, too). Thanks!

[meemee]

i had absolutely NO questions the first time. none what soever.

dd was doing well. there was nothing for me to ask.

[LuckyMommaToo]

At ours, the teacher also went over her initial assessments of DS (reading, math, social). I asked questions like:
-- Which kids is he connecting with most?
-- Is there anything particular we should work on at home (social or academic), and how?
-- What's your plan to meet his needs in X (in our case, reading), since he's way above grade level?

That's all I can remember. Most of my questions came naturally as we conversed.
-e

p.s. There's no way I could bring DS, unless he was doing something with headphones on. He's such a little snoop!

[emilysmama]

Originally Posted by Pepe

Hello! I have the same question re: what to expect. When it's our turn to ask questions, I'm wondering what I should ask the teacher. emilysmama, would you be comfortable sharing what questions you asked? Though this is certainly child-specific, I think knowing what others ask would spark some ideas in my head (so other people, please chime in, too). Thanks!

This is very embarrassing, because I can't remember what questions I had.
If I had been smart, I would have had a couple questions like, "What should we be doing at home to help our child with her weaknesses," but I didn't. What I did, was a brought a pad of paper and a pencil. During the time the teacher was talking, I would jot questions down instead of asking them as they occurred. Then, when the teacher was done covering what she wanted, I asked her my questions. That way, I didn't side track the teacher from covering what she wanted to talk about, and I still had the opportunity to ask for what clarification I needed. If I hadn't had any questions, that would have been more than fine, because then the teacher would have had an all too rare chance to go use the bathroom.

[Girlprof]

I am the kind of person who always has lots of questions, but it varies depending on what is going on at school. Some of mine have been:

Who does he usually play with and what do they do?
Is he making friends?
Does he seem to have favorite activities/subjects?
Do you have any ideas for helping him stay focused?
He didn't like it when all the kids lost recess, can you explain what happened that day?

My KG teacher friend always has good ideas and her favorite question is:

How do you differentiate what you're doing in the classroom?

Which basically means, how to you handle that some kids are doing much better/worse than other kids? This is a good question because it should yield a concrete answer.

You might also ask about the schedule for a normal day.