They creeped up pretty quickly, and seemed to pass by pretty quickly too :)
For those readers new to my blog, at my school the lead teachers do not come to school the whole week so we can focus on writing up notes and preparing for conferences with parents in the evenings (and then everyone gets Friday off! Yay!)
I structured my conferences a bit differently this year. In the past, I kept literally every paper that my students completed to show parents.
I realized that showing them worksheets isn't really demonstrating what we do in my classroom every day, as I typically teach in a very hands-on way.
Yes, I had a few spelling and math assessments to show each child's progress, but what I really wanted to share with parents was how their child responded to the different activities we do to teach subjects like spelling, math, writing, and reading.
I set up different materials (pattern blocks and geo-boards for math, vowel-sound sorting games for spelling, several of our read alouds) on the table.
Parents had the opportunity to interact in learning the same way as my students, as I shared my observations and notes about how their child was doing with the different concepts. Parents seemed to really enjoy this structure, and I plan on doing it again in the spring!
A perk of conference week is that all of us teachers get spoiled with dinners prepared by the administration and office staff every evening during our hour long break. I had delicious meals like hearty split pea soup, pulled pork tacos, mushroom risotto and pumpkin bisque all week.
My husband is always super jealous of this, so I had to make sure he had some yummy dinners to eat while I was at conferences! For my wedding shower, my grandmother got me a slow cooker from my registry. It has quickly become one of my favorite things to use in the kitchen!
Since I was home during the day preparing my notes, all I had to do was find some simple "set-it and forget-it" dinners that hubs could just heap onto his plate when he got home from work (some sides required reheating in the microwave, but really, who can't handle pushing "2" and "start" after a long day?). The best part is that these recipes make a lot, so he could reheat the leftovers the next night (or I could eat them for lunch the next day, which is kind of what happened...)
Conference week menu (for hungry husbands):
BBQ Ribs with roasted potatoes and a leafy green salad
Healthy orange chicken with brown rice and peas
Italian chicken sausage and whole wheat linguine in pesto sauce (Okay, so this one isn't a slow-cooker recipe, but super quick and easy! Just brown up some chicken sausage, boil some pasta, and add some jarred pesto sauce--I also like to dash on some red pepper flakes and some oregano for extra flavor)
Bon appetit!
