VNGS Medavakkam's SLC Student Led conference- 12th October,2019

The first SLC-Student Led Conference was held on 12^thOctober, 2019 for classes VI – VIII at VNGS Medavakkam.Usually during Parents Teachers Meetings the parents meet their wards' teachers and discuss about their child’s performance in school.

The SLC was with a difference!

The Student Led Conference was an initiative to bring about a positive approach in the students in being able to analyze their strengths and weaknesses, where they lag behind and what are their positives.

The conference format at VNGS Medavakkam school had students show parents some of their work and explain their grades in a student-led conference.  The conference was held in a class where the students were asked to present a hand written report prepared by them on various parameters,The students set up a SLC binder to contain a portfolio as well as graded work and their mark sheets. The students had to keep their binders orderly because they would use them to lead their conferences.

Two days before the conference, the students were asked to prepare a detailed portfolio on their subjects their achieved target in Term 1 and the target to be achieved in term 2, their positives, what are the areas they need to improve on, what are their strengths ,what they learnt during the term in various co-curricular activities ,what they feel they need to concentrate on to further improve and which they felt they had learned the most and enjoy doing. Students also wrote a reflection on their grades and study habits. They set goals for the next semester and organized their graded work section.

The day before theconference, teachers role-played, pretending to be the student, with the student playing the teacher or the parent. Teachers modeled, for example, how to explain a poor grade to parents, and they gave students a checklist of what to cover in the conference.

From the teacher's perspective, they were able to get a better picture of each child. It forced them to sit down with each student and review their strengths and weaknesses. They were able to have a better understanding on a child’s learning habits and take corrective actions in the future.

On the day of  the SLC the parents were invited to a classroom where their ward explained to their parents of their achievements and their shortcomings .This helped the students to have a self-evaluation of themselves   and made them to understand that they are in control of their own efforts in the learning process.When a student explains what he or she learned from an assignment they learn to be more responsible for the score he or she achieved.By having students assess how they are progressing toward those standards, students will know how far they've come and how far they have to go to meet the standards. Thus having a complete self-analysis of oneself and help them take complete responsibility for their learning. Also the students were able to express themselves of why and what made them score better or fall short of their grades.

The students lead conference thus focused on the student’s point of view in the learning process than what the teacher or parent’sfeel. Thus the SLC at VNGSM was a good initiative to bring about an overall change on how we view an assessment model. What better way than self-evaluation.

“No one knows you better than you know yourself”

Blog post by
Manju Menon

PRIMARY  ACO

VELAMMAL NEWGEN SCHOOL-MEDAVAKKAM