ASSIGNMENT SEVEN: Student Writing Conference - Choose one or two children (classroom students, relatives, neighbors...) to conduct an informal conference with. You may choose to use one of Regie’s formats, your own or the one below, which I use in a conferring notebook. You need to find a system that will work for you. Example 1 (and below) is the format I use for each writing conference that I hold with students. Keep in mind that while you are conferring with students, the majority of other students should be writing!
(Note: If you aren’t currently teaching please find a school-age child to do a conference with. We believe you will find it is worth the effort.)
Student Name: Date:
? (Question- Teacher asks)- “What are you
working on today in your writing?”
C (Compliment)- Compliment the student on one
strategy they are using well.
TP (Teaching Point)- What is one
strategy/point/goal you can teach this student to
move them forward?
FNT (For Next Time)- What needs to be a focus
during the next conference/what were set goals?
ASSIGNMENT SEVEN: After completing your one or two conferences, please reflect on how well they went and how they will impact your whole group, small group and independent instruction in your classroom. Post your reflective response to the blog.
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After watching the conferencing dvd I was eager to conference with a child using the format suggested. Having the student read the story, while I listened without looking at the text was the very beneficial. I wasn’t tempted to fix something. I could just listen to the child’s story, literally in their words. This practice enabled me to easily begin my discussion with a compliment.
ReplyDeleteThis student’s story was about our recent field trip to Wildwood Recreation area. I noticed that she effectively used a metaphor- she compared some jagged pointed dead trees to a pocket -knife in a boy’s pocket. I stopped the conference so she could read this sentence to the class. The students were as impressed as I was and the girl beamed.
When we re-grouped I was able to talk to her about changing the order of a few sentences. She had a great lead sentence in the middle of her story. She knew how to show the change with arrows. We noticed that she used the word “and” instead of using a period. We set goal that she would need to frequently re-read her writing and if she used “and” too much she would replace it with a period.
In another conference a student and I spoke about how he used the word awesome and cool much to often. I would have him explain why it was cool and then after he gave a great verbal description would stop him and tell him to go write that. It is still difficult for the kids to capture on paper what they had no problem explaining in words.
For each of the conferences I would compliment interesting ways the spelled challenging words and circle misspelled words that were on our word-wall.
The conversation feel of the conference really put the students and ease and was a great opportunity to reinforce the concepts we discussed in whole group conferences. I look forward to building on my experience.
First of all, I am making a ton of half sheet masters with the format that Routman suggests! I love how simple and clearly focused it keeps the conference. My sheet says: What are you working on today in your writing? Compliment: Goal: and For next time, followed by blank lines so that I can fill in. This is a great tracker for me to keep in their files so I can look back and see what goals each student has met and what goals they continue to work on.
ReplyDeleteMy first conference with Chris went really well. Chris is one of those students who comes in and tells me all these fabulous stories full of details and funny moments, and then when he translates that story to paper, it ends up being about 4 sentences. :) When I asked him what he was working on today, he said he was writing a personal narrative about his trip to Disneyland. I complimented him on writing about something that was on his mind and in his heart. I told him I know that this is something you are so excited about, and that's what makes the best writing topics! He read his piece to me, and we talked about how we could add more details. I asked him to describe how he was feeling on his favorite ride, how he felt before the ride and then after the ride... I knew he knew the answers to these questions because he had told me at the beginning of the day. We agreed that at our next conference, we will discuss how well he added more details and more depth to his story. I know he can do it; he just needs that explicit, specific instruction! This format lends so well to that.
My next conference was with Bella. Bella is a beautiful writer; she has great word choice, but her writing can seem choppy and full of the same sentence structure repeated. So, we talked about how using transition words can help for sentence flow in a writing piece. She told me that she was working on a personal narrative about when her dad came home from his work trip to Japan. I complimented her on her word choice, and underlined the words that were unique and "juicy." Then, we looked at where we could add transition words in the first few sentences of her writing, like first, next, then, etc. The last half of her writing, I asked her to re-read and see where she thought a few more transition words would best fit. Our goal for moving forward was to try to use at least five transition words in our writing. We agreed that we would both look for that the next time we conferenced.
Like I said before, I love this format because it is so concise and clear. It will help me to design mini-lessons based on whether the majority of the class is working toward the same goal as well as to know what the overall strengths are in our class.
I have writing conferences on a pretty consistent basis, usually meeting with at least 6-7 students every day during writers workshop time. Today I met with four and, although I meet with them, I have not been keeping accurate data when I meet with them. Since I am setting up CAFÉ in my classroom at the same time as reconfiguring my writing time, I decided that I would keep one notebook that has both reading and writing conferring information for each student. I prefer to do it this way because I feel that I may note something during reading time that needs to be addressed during writing and visa versa. I also believe that since one of the ideas in the past chapters in the text was to integrate the skills, to me it would make sense that the conferring might also be somewhat integrated in a sense that one might make note of a strength or a weakness at any student conference time. I am getting my notebook set up as I type this and for Monday, it will be ready to go. I am excited to be able to have a way to organize what I am seeing with students and to have that record to see what the specific skills we are talking about addressing. I like the format that was in the attachment two, and that is the format which I plan on placing in the conferring notebook. It is really straight forward and easy to use and implement without a lot of extra setup, as once I get the notebook set up, I will just need to make sure I am stocked with copies and ready to place them in each students section. During the conferring time, I noticed that I am seeing the same issues every time I meet with a student. I think that I am not explicitly stating to the student that this is what we need to work on. I think that the data piece of the conferring will really help out and hold both students and myself accountable for those goals and the future focus. I think that lining up a clear focus or next step for the students will be key in seeing their progress.
ReplyDeleteHello Megan,
ReplyDeleteGlad your experiences with conferring went so well. Isn’t it powerful to watch students when you share their work with the class!?!!!!
Hi Jen!
Yes, we agree that we love the simplicity of Regie’s format. Glad the assignment was worthwhile for you!
Hi Jessica,
Finding a method or system to organize and keep our data does take some work. I agree with you. I have used one sheet actually with all the kids names in boxes and on one side was reading and one side was writing notes. It all goes into one notebook, because for me that works best.
Although I do not have a class of my own at the moment, I was able to conference with two 7th graders about their writing using the template from the blog. It has been a little while since I have had my own classroom and I found myself so excited to talk with kids about their writing, I didn’t want the conferences to end.
ReplyDeleteThe two students I spoke with were in the publishing stage of admiration essays, not the most ideal time for a teachable conference, but we were able to celebrate their work. As an outsider to the assignment, I asked each student to describe the assignment to me and explain what they were being asked to do. The good part of this was they both came out with basically the same answer, meaning they knew exactly what was expected of them. The down side was it was a very scripted paper. They were allowed to select anyone they admired, but the essay had to be in a four paragraph format. They had an introduction paragraph, an example paragraph, an incident paragraph, and a conclusion paragraph. Also,within the paragraphs they had requirements as well. When I asked if the requirements were helpful, I was surprised at the response. One student found the requirements restricted his writing, which I expected, but the other student liked the requirements. She said it helped her to figure out what to say and when she felt stuck, she just thought about what was supposed to be in that part of the paper and that gave her ideas.
After reading Regie’s approach, I purposefully put down my pen and paper while they read their piece to me and just listened. In the past when a student was reading their writing, I would make notes about what I loved and share them with the student. This was so much better because I could really just listen. I had more fun and I think they felt more heard. After they finished reading, I was very conscious of the way I complimented them. I focused strictly on meaning first, exclaiming how much their admiration for this individual showed in their essay and how I could tell how important that person was to them. They beamed with pride. This was a great change for me. I had always be conscious of giving students positive comments first, but it wasn’t always about meaning. I will definitely make the change to focus on meaning first in the future.
The teachable moments part of the conferences was hard at this stage in the process so I asked them to share a part of the paper they struggled with and we discussed strategies they could use in the future.
Although I know Regie and myself would not approach writing in such a scripted way, the quality of writing was extremely high in both cases. The organization and flow was excellent, which was not that surprising considering the format. I big surprise was that some how between all the restrictions both students still managed to have their voice come through. They were certainly both proud of their work, but I did walk away wondering about the joy.
Oh that's great you were able to confer with the two students. I think you did a great job considering they were in the publishing phase. Your final comment is important. Is this teacher developing writers? Was there joy? Did you ask them if they liked writing? I am just curious.
ReplyDelete