Are you trying to identify which students to bring forward for discussion at a Collaborative Team Meeting? Are you wondering how to determine which students to talk about during your Collaborative Team Meeting? Are you trying to figure out how to talk about a number of students in a focused way to ensure the efficiency of your Collaborative Team Meeting?
The following are some considerations that may be beneficial when we know we need to talk about a particular student.
The Pre-Meeting Organizer
In his blog post, Examining Collaborative Team Meetings - Pre-Meeting Organizers, Kurtis Hewson explores the idea of having teachers come to the Collaborative Team Meeting prepared for the conversation. This preparedness is critical to the success of the solution-focused discussion, and a pre-meeting organizer is suggested as a way to organize prior to a meeting.
The Student Alert in WeCollab
Within WeCollab, the pre-meeting process described by Kurtis can be timely on the part of the teacher as well as lead to incredible efficiencies during Collaborative Team Meetings.
The Student Alert is a digital way of identifying the reason a student might need to be brought forward in a meeting discussion: to celebrate, to raise a concern, or to identify an opportunity to challenge and enrich the learning.
The timeliness of this feature is that it can be accessed at any time, allowing a teacher to enact an alert prior to a Collaborative Team Meeting. Adding an Alert not only provides an indication of who needs to be talked about during the meeting, but the Alert raises awareness to anyone who accesses the Student Profile that the student is on the radar. As well, where a staff member is subscribed to a student, the Alert becomes part of the daily or weekly email summary (student subscription will be explored in a future blog post).
Add an Alert
Clicking on the green bell in the School Alert area in the Student Profile will bring up a pop up window where text can be entered to describe the reason for bringing the student forward for discussion.
View an Alert
When an Alert exists in a Student Profile, the previously grey exclamation icon is now a red exclamation icon. The text below will show the Alert that has been entered.
Show Alerts on the Team Board
The ability to address the students we need to talk about becomes incredibly efficient with the use of the Student Alerts toggle button on the Team Board.
Not only does this clearly identify the students whose teachers have noted that "we need to talk about...", but the functionality of WeCollab in this context becomes focused on these students: it is only their profiles that can be accessed for the purposes of adding meeting notes or updating details.
An Alert appears on the Team Board as a red exclamation mark in the bottom left on the Student Card.
Hovering over the Student Card will show a preview of the Alert text and the name of the user who added the Alert.
Hovering over the Alert text will provide the remainder of the Alert.
No Student Falls Through the Cracks
If an Alert is not addressed during a Collaborative Team Meeting, it remains in the Student Profile until such time as someone removes it. While there may not have been time to talk about a particular child at this meeting, they remain on the radar to be brought up at the next meeting.
We Need to Talk About...
As a user of WeCollab, the moment that "we need to talk about..." comes to mind, the process is built into the system so that the Alert can be created expeditiously. Peace of mind can be had walking into a Collaborative Team Meeting: the necessary pre-meeting organization has taken place so there can be a student-centred, solution-focused discussion.
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