Student Wellbeing & Learning
Student Agency Conferences - 31st March 2026
The purpose of our agency conferences is to support students in taking ownership of their learning, share their celebrations and the next steps in their learning. These conferences provide a space for students to reflect, recognise what helps them learn, and set new goals. It’s also a chance to identify which High Impact Learner Agency Traits (HILATs) students’ need to draw on to help them keep on climbing up that ladder of success and how teachers and parents can support them in their learning journey.
One of our learner agency traits is Engaging in Dialogue. Our Student Agency Conferences are all about Engaging in Dialogue.
Engaging in dialogue encourages students to actively participate in meaningful conversations that deepen their knowledge, learning, and critical thinking. By sharing ideas, asking questions, and considering other perspectives, students work together to build new understanding.
Learning to engage in dialogue helps develop active listening, clear communication, clarifying questions, and thoughtful reflection skills that support both individual and collective growth. Engaging in dialogue is important because it builds stronger connections with others and expands our own thinking. It fosters curiosity, empathy, and problem-solving by exposing students to different perspectives.
For meaningful learning conversations to happen, it’s important that both teachers and parents are involved in that dialogue by supporting and extending student thinking.
Families can support reflective thinking by asking thought provoking questions and actively listening to their responses. This approach can support your child to articulate their thoughts, identifying areas for growth, and setting meaningful goals. We have included a range of prompting questions designed to support you to guide your child in reflecting on their learning:
- “Tell me more about this.”
- “I can see that you…”
- “I noticed that…”
- “You look proud—are you? What are you proud of?”
- “I’m so curious—how did you do that?”
- “What was the hardest (or easiest) part?”
- “What did you learn from that?”
- “How did you come up with that idea?”
- What can we do to support you to achieve your goal?
- Is there anything we can do with you at home to support you with your learning?
- How do you think you have improved your student agency since the last student agency conference?
- Are there any specific areas where you feel you need additional support or guidance, and how can we work together to address them?
This term, we have been focusing on ‘Being Persistent’. During the conferences, your child will speak about how they have been persistent in their learning or how they need to work on persistence to ensure their learning continues to grow. Encouraging your child to think about how they could develop this persistence at school and at home helps build a strong home–school partnership and supports your child in developing important learning and life skills.
By encouraging your child to reflect on their learning you are nurturing resilience, perseverance, and a sense of agency that will serve them well both inside and outside the classroom. We believe Student Agency conferences are a wonderful opportunity to celebrate accomplishments, discuss future learning, and collaboratively set meaningful goals.
We’re looking forward to a wonderful day of student voice, ownership, showing how we have been persistent and engaging in dialogue!
Janine Hough & Brad Ryan
