Conferring

Lately, I have been reading a lot on conferring. Katie Wood Ray and Aimee Buckner have inspired me to make this post. A lot of the information I am writing about today comes from readings written by Ray and Buckner.

Many teachers skip over this critical part of the writing process: conferring. Teachers must confer with students during independent writing time. Make sure that you move out to kids, don’t have them come to you. This way you are visible and can work with your community of learners. It is important to have a record system for your conferences. You must know who you talked to and what you talked about. Documenting this is important.

The purpose during this time is to teach. However, sometimes, interruptions can take place. When I am conferring with students, sometimes I get random stragglers who will come up to me. Most of the time, though, if I ask a kid, 'can you take care of this on  your own?' they are able to do so.

Lucy Calkins has told us that there is 4 Parts of a Writing Conference.

1. Research
-Ask kids‘what craft techniques are you using?’
-Preface with ‘Tell me about….’
-Kids need to articulate their writing process. They should not tell you to read to find out. They need to TELL about their writing.
-Ask open ended questions, use wait time for no-talkers.
-Once we hear something in the student’s discussion, we need to interrupt them and go back to teaching that directly.
-We teach in response to what kids say.

2.Decide on what to teach
-Give feedback to students

3. Teach
-Have kids try the strategy taught right there
-Have kids try to do the strategy in their own writing independently

4. Make a record of conferences
-Think of conferences as conversations
-They go well if both parties know why we are having them
-Do not try to fix everything
-At the end of the conference, we should be able to name what we did to help the student become a better writer.