Parents can already see the grades. What else will you bring?

Parent-teacher meetings come round quickly. The gradebook is open, families can already see the marks online and there are only a few minutes per student. It is easy to repeat what parents have already read, or to say "she's doing great" and move on.

The most useful thing you can bring is what the grades don't show: how the student takes part, where they get stuck and what has changed. As we wrote in Not All Student Progress Fits in a Gradebook, much of a student's progress happens between the marks. Bringing it to a meeting doesn't take hours of preparation. It takes a few notes from earlier in the term and three questions.

Before the meeting: three questions per student

Look back over your notes and answer three questions for each student. One line each is enough.

1. What do they do well, beyond the grade? A question that moved the discussion on, trying again after a mistake, helping a classmate. Be specific: "explains her method to others when we work in pairs" says more than "a good student".
2. What is one thing to work on, and where? Tie it to a topic or a situation, not to the child. "Finds it hard to start independent work in geometry" gives parents something they can help with. "Lazy" does not.
3. What has changed? Something you tried and what happened next. "We moved his seat three weeks ago and he has joined discussions more often since." This turns the meeting from a verdict into a progress update.

If you can't answer the first question for a student, that is worth knowing too. The quiet students who do everything expected of them are often the ones we have least to say about. Give them an extra minute.

No surprises

If something worries you, the meeting is not the place to reveal it. Crystal Frommert makes this point in an Edutopia piece on parent conferences: difficult news belongs in an earlier conversation, so the meeting can focus on what has happened since. A short message when you first notice a pattern means you and the family arrive on the same side of the table.

During the meeting: ask before you tell

Start with a question: "How do you feel the term is going?" Parents see things you don't, like how long homework takes at home or what their child says about your lessons. Write down anything new. It is an observation like any other and it may explain something you have seen in class.

Two more habits help:

• Describe, don't compare. Talk about the child's own progress, not their place in the class.
• Use plain words. "Struggles to get started" is clearer than school jargon.

Try this before your next meetings

Pick three students: one who is doing well, one you are worried about and one you rarely notice. Answer the three questions for each. If one answer was hard to find, start paying attention to that area in your lessons this week.

Where ClassMap fits

The three questions are easier when the observations are already there. In ClassMap, each student's history keeps what you noted lesson by lesson: participation, development level by subject and the interventions you tried, with their outcome. Before a meeting you read back over what you actually saw instead of trying to remember it.

The routine works with a notebook too. What matters is arriving with something specific to say about every child, including the ones who are "doing fine".