Create Your Own Customized Conferring Form Online!

by: Jesús López De Nava
Elementary Bilingual Coach

   This past December the Elementary Language Arts curriculum department held a reading cadre for the district's Kindergarten and 1st grade teachers at Wilson Elementary. The main focus of the presentation was reading workshop conferring and record keeping. When it came to the part of record keeping, teachers were encouraged to showcase the artifacts they use to take their conferencing notes. I was gladly surprised to see so many different and creative ways teachers have come up with to be effective when it comes to note taking. There was one in particular though that caught my attention: it was an online form made with Google forms that had an add-on incorporated called "Doc Appender" (thank you Ginnings BIL teachers!).

   The benefit of using the Doc Appender add-on is noteworthy when it comes to its final product. Instead of the boring, difficult to read google sheet that is normally generated by google forms:



you get instead this neat, preformatted, organized, and easy to read google doc instead:



   Isn't this great? Since this is a regular google doc that resides in your google drive think about the possibilities: you can share them with your peers for PLC collaboration, with your administrators for MTSS meetings, use it during parent conferences, etc. It's very easy on the eyes and would show the progression of learning throughout the school year for each one of your kids. Imagine how valuable this document would be for the student's next teacher at the beginning of the following school year!

   As you can notice on the example above, you can additionally upload pictures, voice recordings of students reading aloud, videos, and just about anything you'd like to include as evidence. These multimedia elements would have a link embedded into the document for everybody's easy access, just one click away... how cool is that!

   Lastly, with a few changes you can create similar forms for your other subjects such as math, science, writing, etc., as well as for any other situation in which you need to keep documentation: parent conferences, discipline logs, etc.

   Here are the links to a four-part instructional video where I will take you step by step through the process of creating your very own reading workshop conferring form:



       I hope you enjoy watching this video as much as I did recording it. If you would like to give this a try and need support, please don't hesitate to contact me. I can come and guide you through the process in person. My email is jlopezdenava@dentonisd.org.









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