Conferring

Hi Everyone!

It's been a long time since my last post! Sorry, really busy!

One of my goals this year was to look deeply into how I was conducting my reading and writing conferences with my students. After much self-reflection,  I realized how important it is to follow the architecture of a conference as noted by the team at the Reading and Writing Project at TC. (see below) 

Another thing that I came to realize is that students need to be taught how to respond to their coach in a conference. They need to learn the "language" of a conference.   I realized this as I was coaching into a number of classrooms. As teachers we are great at conducting our conferences using the necessary framework...the problem is that the students don't know what to do! Hence, many of our conferences aren't really helping the kids with what they are struggling with. In classrooms where students know what they need help with, the teaching conference is more effective. Students are left with tools and ideas that will help to improve their work! Therefore, I find that it is so necessary to explicitly teach kids how to articulate their needs as readers and writers during conferences.

Happy Conferring!
Peace, 

The Architecture of a Conference Research:  Name what the child has done as a writer and remind them to do it often in future writing. Compliment:  Try to use words like, "I would like to compliment you for . . That's what writers do." Teach:  Decide what you want to teach and how you want to teach it.  Help the child get started doing what you hope he/she will do.   Link:  At the end of the conference, name what the child has done.  Repeat the teaching point saying this is what you have seen the child doing.  Encourage the child to continue to do this often and in many writing pieces in the future.

Conference Checklist I began the conference with observation and open ended questions. I complimented the writer on something specific (on the edge of his/her ability). I decided what to teach the student based on my research: either building on his/her strengths or working on a deficit. I taught the student one thing by either demonstrating or coaching. I actively involved the student in trying out what I taught him/her, while still sitting with the student. I reiterated my earlier compliment. I made sure the student knew what he/she was to do during independent work. ​

Key Statements to Guide a Conference "How is it going as a writer?" "What are you working on as a writer?" "You are looking at ways to make your story better.  That's what writers do." "You know what I noticed that you were doing and what I would like to compliment you . . . " "Last week we were working on . . . and I see you are doing that." "I would like to teach you something." "Are you ready to do that?" "Did you notice how the author wrote . . .?" "What if you did something like that?" "I want to teach you that writers do like this author and they sometimes . . ." "You could do this today and any day . . . " "You can make it so easy for the reader to see what is going on . . . "

 "The point of writing conferences, ultimately, is to help students become life long writers."  

Carl Anderson, Assessing Writers

Baby Literary Essay

After attending a great summer institute breakout session at the Reading and Writing Project at Teachers College this summer, I came back with a slightly deeper understanding of how I might move my students into writing stronger literary response essays, in less time. The most important thing that I took away was that I realized that I needed to lift the level of the way my students were closely reading and interpreting text, in order to lift the level of the baby literary essay. Here's the gist:

• First, students read the text. (start off with short texts such as short stories, picture books, or excerpts from longer texts)
• Reread to interpret the text 
• Rehearsing
• Fast Drafting

As students are working through the Reading to Interpret the Text phase, they can ask themselves questions such as:

• Whose story is being told?

• What kind of a person is the character? What traits could I use to describe the character?

• What does the character want at this point?

• What are some of the emotions and feelings the character has during this part?

As students continue reading through the middle of the text, they can ask themselves questions such as:

• What gets in the way of the character getting what he wants?

• Have the character's feelings and emotions changed? How and why are they changing?

• Are there any problems or issues starting to arise?

As students continue to read and interpret the text through the end, they can ask questions such as:

• What is the message the author wants us to notice?

• Is there a life lesson being taught?

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Literary Essay Framework:

Book title: 

Author's name:

Brief summary of the text:

Sentence about the theme, or big idea, from the text:

Evidence and examples from the text that illustrate or show the theme, or big idea:


Below are the anchor charts I used throughout the unit.

Below is an example of how the unit might go: 

 

PEACE!