• Their Name Ticket: The child demonstrates how well they print their first and last name and compares it to a September name ticket sample. “Wow! Look at my progress!”
• The child’s individual Reading Box
• The “I Can Read” Notebook and collection of Mother Goose and Read and Sing Little Books.  The child may also recite some favorite poems or rhymes from the pocket chart and language charts around the room.
• Photos of the child involved in science projects, block building, cooking, working with math manipulatives, acting out nursery rhymes, etc.  The child explains what they are doing and learning.
• Samples of their word writing fluency assessment: “Write all the words you know!” (November/January/May)
• Audio tape of the child reading (January–May).  Initially this may be “memory reading.”  Or, the child can read a favorite Big Book or language chart, tracking the words during the conference.
• Child’s current kid writing book or journal with adult underwriting.  (Compare with the child’s September and January samples.)
• Examples of number writing (September/January/May).
• Child may verbalize to parents “How I learned to read this year!”
• Child’s “I Can Spell” Bookmark with hearts or stars by all the words the child can spell: Child may demonstrate how to spell “love” or “because” and other high-frequency words.
• Any special writing/art project that is chosen by the student or teacher.
• Assessment showing letters and sounds a child knows (color code – September, January, May).  Child may read ABC Phonics Sing, Sing, and Read Songbook or whatever ABC book the teacher uses.
• ABC timed fluency assessment showing child’s growth in recalling and printing letters efficiently.  Child may ask parent to watch how fluently they can print a-z in one minute with a timer set.
• Student self-portraits and name writing from the first day of school and each month thereafter.
• Examples of meaningful project work or “studies” the child has pursued. (Children may have written “My Rock Book”, “All About Cats”, etc.)
• Child may also want to share about who their friends are and how they feel about school.  Parents can ask, “Tell me about your new friends!” “How do you feel about school?”
• Child can verbalize their goals for the remainder of the yearor over summer. (Reading, writing, and studying things in nature every day!)

Each teacher develops a unique checklist of conference items that the child will share.  Some kindergarten teachers add graphics to this checklist. (See samples on the following pages.)

Patti Keudell chooses to color the various content areas on the parent-child checklist to coincide with the portfolio (for example, math samples are in a green folder, so math boxes on the checklist are green).