PTC freebie and An Abbreviation & Punctuation Education

Tomorrow and Thursday we have parent teacher conferences from 2-8pm at my school.  I'm always a little nervous going into the first one of the year because usually I don't know the parents well enough yet to gauge which type of parent they are.  Are they the "What, my child?, no! He/She can't possibly do anything wrong!" type or the "What did he/she do now? Oh yeah, he/she does that all the time at home" type, or the "Thank you SO much for everything you do for our child! What can we do to help him/her succeed?" type?

I really enjoy  meeting with parents and forging positive relationships and even friendships with the united goal of helping my students succeed.  Its always fun to meet the parents too because you can always see where each child gets of their habits/traits/mannerisms/behaviors, etc. I'm sure glad that we get a day off afterwards though because 26 conferences in 2 days, fifteen minutes apart, back to back after teaching all day is EXHAUSTING!!   

 Last year I thought it would be fun to have my students write their parents a letter and leave it on their desk for them to find when they came to parent teacher conferences.  On the side of the paper facing up they created a riddle with clues about themselves and a self portrait, and on the other side they wrote a letter to their parents all about the things they had been learning in school and said thank you to their parents for supporting them in their education.  

When the parents come I also have a form for them to write a quick note to their child to leave on their desk.  They kids LOVE finding the note the next morning and reading it to themselves. If you want to download a free copy of either form just click the images. 

We have been working on identifying and writing all different kinds of sentences in my class.  After reviewing  our beginning of the year NWEA Map test data I decided we needed to practice abbreviating and punctuating so I created this unit. Click the image or here if you want to check it out on TPT.  It has LOTS of fun things to practice and my students have been loving it.  Today we worked on our punctuation flap book and they thought it was the. coolest. thing. ever.  Haha.  I love it.  The simple joys.

Anyway, leave me a comment and let me know what tips you have for parent teacher conferences and I'll give the unit away FREE to someone who leaves a comment and their email address.  {I'll let my husband choose who :) }