Questions to Assess Your Child's Progress
By Rachel Angrisani
The best way to assess your child's progress is to ask three people: their teacher, yourself, and your child. Ask the teacher intentional questions about your child's skills, concerns, and how best to support your child at home. Ask yourself whether the pace and workload fit your child. Ask your child what feels easy, challenging, or confusing. Ask yourself what the teacher would work on with your child at home. Together, those answers can help give you the full picture.
We've come to the point in the school year where we're in the groove of learning, and the rhythms and routines of school are set. This is a great time to check in on how your child is doing overall and what support may help them move forward. Your child can also offer valuable insight into what's working well and what's not.
Below you'll find three lists: questions for parent-teacher conferences, questions for homeschooling parents, and questions to ask your learner directly.
Why Should You Prepare Questions for a Parent-Teacher Conference?
Parent-teacher conferences are a wonderful opportunity to learn how your child is doing in class, their areas of effort and ease, and what support you can give at home. Sometimes these conferences feel very comprehensive; other times, they feel a little rushed.
In either case, but especially the latter, it helps to come prepared. A list of questions helps the teacher give you insightful, useful information about how your student is learning, what is getting in the way, and which supports will help moving forward.
What Questions Should You Ask at a Parent-Teacher Conference?
If your child attends school outside of the home, bring these 10 questions:
What are the most important concepts or skills my child needs to have mastered by the end of this semester or school year?
Are there any concepts or skills you are concerned my child may not master? If so, how will you work on developing these skills?
What can we do at home to make sure our child is keeping up with the pace of the classroom?
Are students offered different test-taking modalities? If so, how are assessments differentiated?
In what ways are creativity, ingenuity, and collaboration promoted in the classroom?
How can you and I work together to overcome difficulties or hindrances to learning?
Is homework part of the overall grade? If so, what weight does it hold?
Do you offer re-testing and extra credit?
What test-taking strategies does my child practice at school, and how can I support them when my child is studying at home?
Is there anything about my child outside of academics that you would like to discuss?
How Can Homeschool Parents Assess Their Child's Progress?
If your child schools at home, use these 9 questions to reflect on your child's development and your homeschool experience:
What are the most important concepts and skills my child needs to have by the end of the semester or school year?
Are there any concepts or skills I'm concerned my child hasn't mastered? If so, how will we work on developing these skills?
Are we keeping up with an assessment schedule that is the right pace for my child's needs and learning style?
How can we bring collaboration, creativity, and purpose into our lessons? Specifically, how can we foster collaborative experiences in our homeschool setting?
What are we doing to address the challenges we face in our homeschool relationship?
What test-taking modalities can I offer? Can my child and I explore how they want to be assessed?
How can we incorporate direct instruction on test-taking strategies into our lessons?
Is my child's workload challenging enough without being overwhelming?
Is there anything about my child outside of academics that I would like to explore or learn more about?
What Questions Should You Ask Your Child About School?
Getting your learner's input is just as valuable as their teacher's input and your own. Try these 8 questions:
What feels easiest right now?
What feels challenging?
What aspects of school and learning are confusing?
Do you understand what your teacher or I am asking you to do?
Is your work confusing, or are you struggling with where to start?
What are you getting better at?
What are you proud of?
Is there anything you wish your teacher or I understood about your learning?
Listen first, and solve second. Focus on what your child is telling you about their learning before coming in with a plan.
How Do You Use the Answers?
These questions cover both academic progress and the learning environment. For parents whose children attend school outside of the home, they help bridge the connection between school and home. For homeschooling parents, they help you reflect on the structure of your homeschool program.
Parent-teacher conferences are also a time for you to share: what you feel is important for the teacher to know about your child, what you observe at home, and anything that might affect their experience at school.
At this point in the school year, there is plenty of time left to make adjustments and to celebrate what's going well. When you bring your child's perspective together with the teacher's and your own, you have a much fuller picture of your learner and a stronger starting point for what comes next.
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A few months into the school year, once routines are set. There's enough to observe, and still plenty of time to make adjustments.
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Prioritize three: the most important skills to master this year, any concerns the teacher has, and what you can do at home to help.
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Yes. Children can tell you what feels easy, hard, or confusing in ways a grade can't. Ask them before the conference so you can share what they said.
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Homeschool parents can reflect on the same areas a teacher would: skill mastery, pacing, workload, assessment style, and how the child feels about learning.
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Start with the positive questions, like "What are you proud of?" or "What are you getting better at?" Then listen without jumping in to fix anything.
