Thankful for parent teacher conferences

November is a great time to teach  about Thankfulness.

This turkey is on a fellow Kindergarten teachers bulletin board.  Isn't he cute?

November is also parent/teacher conferences.  They terrify me....there I admitted it.  As much as I love meeting with the parents, the idea of parent/teacher conferences just scares the bejeezus out of me.

I want to start my conferences on a positive note, so one thing I do is have the parents write on a turkey feather three compliments about their student.  This accomplishes two things: first, it has us talking about good things regarding their child, and second, it gives me  feathers for our turkey bulletin board and a chance to compliment each student, making them feel wonderful.

This year I took those turkey feathers as a chance to introduce thankful journals.  We brainstormed things we were thankful for using this fun organizer from Jen Bradshaw at Teacher Karma

 

Then we picked four to use in our journals.  I just had my students fold their paper in four sections and in each section write and draw about something they are thankful for.  Just a simple 4-square graphic organizer for planning.  We revised our writing by adding the word because to what we had written the day before.  I wanted more than just I am thankful for statements.  I wanted thoughtful reasons.

We are in the process now of writing our foldout pages to add to this book created by Jennifer at 4mulaFun

I have so many things to be thankful for, I could fill a hundred journals.  Model for your students true gratitude by making your own journal.  Happy Thanksgiving!