Student Led Parent Teacher Conferences

Did you ever have back to school night?  Do you remember how incredibly excited you were whenever back to school night rolled around?  Your WHOLE family got to come to your school and see what you were doing.  I can't be the only one out there who felt this way as a kid.  Back to School Nights were  seriously the highlight of my elementary school years.  I STILL remember (with fondness bordering on giddiness) guiding my parents around my classroom, showing them all the cool stuff I was working on, and just beaming with pride as my teacher told my parents what a great student I was.

Well, around here they call them Student-Led Parent Teacher Conferences, but it's still just as exciting.  Addison got to show us all sorts of stuff she was working on.



The night of parent teacher conference, which also happened to be the 100th day of school, Addison's teacher had the students write 100 words.  If they completed all 100 words, their paper got cut into these curly cues and hung from the ceiling.

The kids have been learning about volcanoes, and got to "make" one in class. 



The highlight of the evening was watching it erupt.

I missed the first eruption and asked Addison to put in some more baking soda.  Addison looked questioningly at her teacher who gave her the go ahead (apparently they were only supposed to do it one time).  As Bart was helping her put the funnel in, part of the volcano broke off.  I gasped and held my breath waiting for Addison to start crying (she does that from time to time when something she's worked hard on breaks...and she had been telling me about this volcano for days), but she didn't, she just once again looked at her teacher, who said, "Don't worry, that's fine, it's just the demo one."  Then she was fine.  I was pretty impressed, I thought for sure there would be tears.

It wasn't until I asked if Addison needed to get her volcano from the bucket to take home that I realized, it wasn't her volcano that broke at all, it was the Demo volcano for everyone to use!  The lack of tears made sense, but I felt even worse!   We had broken the volcano everyone else would be using that night. Oops!

Fortunately Addison's teacher really didn't mind.  She is such a wonderful teacher, I'm so glad Addison is in her class.



Before we left Addison's teacher asked her what the molten rock was called when it was inside the volcano.
Addison excitedly replied, "Magma!"

"And what is it called outside of the volcano?"
 
"Lava"

And with that Addison earned the right to take home her own "Lava" so that she could make her volcano erupt at home.

More on that in the next blog post...