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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I recently conducted an informal writing conference with a friend’s 5th grade daughter. She had written about a special moment from her summer. I used attachment 2, the form you use for each writing conference that you hold. I used a notecard with the student’s name, date and four parts to the conference listed on it: Question, Compliment, Teaching Point, For Next Time. I found this format to be very easy to use and it really kept me, as the teacher, focused on what I wanted to cover in the conference. Following this format really made the conference manageable, brief, and effective. I have in the past just always gone right into what the student needs to do to improve their writing when conferencing. And these conferences typically went way too long and the students were not engaged at all. I love the dialogue that this format provides. When I asked this young girl what she was working on today, she just opened right up and began to tell me. This gave me information that I could use later in the conference to help prompt her on expanding her ideas. Complimenting her on her word choices brought a big smile to her face. My teaching point was to get her to write a few more details to really paint a picture in my mind. I was able to ask her good questions to elicit a few more details since we had a good opening conversation about her writing. The goals we created together for the next time we met were that she would try to add more details to really help the reader picture this summer camp adventure. I know this way of conferencing is going to open a whole new world for me and my students. Conferencing may actually become FUN!
ReplyDeleteYEAH!!!!! We love hearing posts like this one. We are so glad that you found the format useful and that the conference went so well! :)
ReplyDeleteI viewed some of these conferencing techniques in Regi’s video and they seemed to be effective ways to have the student speak about the topic that they were attempting to convey. Recently, I asked a 9 year old son of a friend to write a story about one of his summer camping trips (I’m sure he was thrilled to be writing this during the summer!). My friend thought that this was a great idea because his child would get some one-on-one help in writing in the summer and I could garner some experience working with elementary school children. The conference type that I held was a one-on-one conference (not sure that it was too formal--it happened in the summertime!) The child wrote a brief story about camping on the coast and after he read it I congratulated him on a job well done. I then went back and attempted to clarify what he meant in a few areas. We were able to eliminate some unnecessary words and thoughts that he had repeated. I made sure that he was a part of the process and that I wasn’t the one doing most of the speaking--only asking the questions. The child was very receptive and understood the reasons why parts were removed or re-worded and it seemed to be a productive short conference. Of course, I was at a bit of a disadvantage being in the summer and attempting this conference in my own home. I do see the benefit of praising the students work and I feel that this is very beneficial to students regardless of age or grade.
ReplyDeleteAssignment #7 - Katherine Holtgraves
ReplyDeleteAhhh the summertime. What a spectacular time to work with kids one on one, on the experiences they are having. LOTS of friends, family and vacations. They have so much "fodder" to write about. I conducted my 2 conferences on students who were working with our teachers at school over the summer. I had them write a letter to me, talking about the most exciting part of their summer. We were able to have a good solid conference - as there were no other kids at school. Part of all of this is having the mature classroom management in place, so kids know what to do and they are not dependent on the teacher for their next steps. Knowing that they are writing their next piece, reading a book to themselves, having a conference etc. are all very important skills to teach one by one. When these are not taught, the teacher is always wondering what the students are doing while meeting one on one. From a teachers perspective, it is building the trust with the group of students that they are doing exactly what they have discussed. It is a great deal about tuning into the student you are working with. I had a lovely 2 conferences with 2 students who I could tune into 100%! That is so difficult to do during the school day, but once you figure out the magical formula for your own classroom, the time is invaluable for all students. This totally reminded me of how intentional the set up for conferences is, how important it is to teach each step of expectations, and finally how much trust is build into writing - Together. I then went back and watched some of Reggie's writing conferences on the DVD, and want to show my teachers these conferences. They should be short and focused! The 2 I had were longer and not as focused as they would have been during the school year during a writing workshop.
My subjects for this assignment were my niece and nephews, grades one, two, and four. Actually, I intended to work with just the eldest, Camden, but they were all excited to help their Aunt Sheryl with her schoolwork, and their mom was happy to give them all a productive project. The family went to their cabin on Nancy Lake for the weekend, and this provided inspiration for their writing. The youngest, Reed, wrote a sweet story entitled “Butterflies and Rabbits”, the second grader, Eli wrote about the “soggy rabbit” that they saw, and Camden wrote a two page essay “My Weekend at the Cabin”.
ReplyDeleteI didn’t have any trouble finding several things to compliment on all the kids’ work. Reed is quite a prolific writer for a 6 year old. She wrote several nice sentences and I told her how impressed I was by her imagination and how much she was able to write. Eli struggles with his schoolwork a little more, but still wrote quite a bit. I told him how much I like all the description in his story, and Camden’s essay included a lot of information about his weekend. I told him that I appreciated his use of interesting words and phrases.
All three kids had completed their writing projects and so I gave each of them editing guidance that they could apply were they to published their work. For Reed, I pointed out a few words that were capitalized that didn’t need to be. We talked about where we use capitals and what kind of words would be capitalized in the middle of a sentence. Eli had misspelled several words including a few “sight” words. His mom had already written the correct spellings so I suggested that he look at the corrections and learn how to spell the words. For Camden, I recommended that he take his time with his final draft, work on neatness, and make sure that he leave defined spaces between his words.
I think the conferences went well. I enjoyed working with the kids, having them read their stories to me, and giving them suggestions on how they could improve their writing. They worked so hard and did such a good job that I felt a little bad critiquing their work, but I don’t think I will feel that way giving guidance to students in my classroom. I look forward to working with individual students during writer’s workshop and I hope those conferences can be as relaxed and enjoyable.
I decided to start my conference process with a whole group read. Since it is summer break, my classroom is a bit on the small side. I used my two sons, 8 and 9, as my guinea pigs. We’ve been working on writing this summer as part of our summer routine. I must say, that it has been difficult. There has been a lot of push back and little joy. Once this class began (end of last week for me) I changed my method of teaching writing and started using the Optimal Learning Model. The two writing pieces we’ve done since this introduction have been very different. The boys are writing with a more authentic voice. We have done more time writing, up to this point. We have not spent much time on the editing yet. I jotted down a few notes with the second reading by each boy. I then conferenced with each of them. My oldest is a very confident writer. He smiled the whole time we conferenced. He was clear about what he was doing and what I expected of him. He is tough on himself, so my words on celebration really appealed to him. My youngest almost seemed nervous during the conference. His voice was very small when I asked him what he was working on. I complimented him on his voice. His writing came from his heart and he put himself out there with his honesty. The strategy I asked him to move forward with was getting his ideas down on paper. I told him not to worry about anything more than that. He seemed excited at the notion of my acceptance of his writing thus far. His goal was to fill his page with as many ideas about his topic (learning how to cook eggs for breakfast this summer).
ReplyDeleteI think I like the idea of having a large side-by-side sheet with all students’ names and a small rectangle (similar to the one in our book). I like jotting down notes as we go and making notation of which kids would benefit from a one on one conference. I really like Writing Strengths/Next Step Appendix H too. I could see keeping a copy for my files and giving the student a copy for their folder.
As I am not currently teaching, and my own kids are too little, I decided to do my informal writing conference with a friend’s 4th grade daughter. She is a bit of a perfectionist and hard on herself so I tried to mostly have positive things to say about her writing. I think it went relatively well, but I felt it was not how I would have liked it to be if I were teaching. I was able to give her 100% of my attention and focus which was great, but it also meant that I did not keep it as short as it should have been in the classroom setting. I also found it harder than I expected to give very specific feedback, even though I was keeping it positive. Then I was pleased, when I asked her for what she thought she did well, and what she thought needed to be improved. I decided that because of how she is so hard on herself to let her come up with most of the suggestions for what to do next time. I found that she came up with two very realistic and great suggestions for her writing next time.
ReplyDeleteI think I will need to keep practicing the one-on-one conferencing so that it becomes more natural and flows easier for me. But I really liked the overall format, and I see how it would be invaluable for my students to receive this kind of feedback. I also see how setting up the routine and the format of doing the conferences will take time, but will be very valuable. Once the routine is established and I can give one student at a time 98% of my attention, (while keeping the conferences brief), I see my students getting more from my feedback. Currently I spend hours making corrections on their papers, and then it seems they don’t ever have the time, energy, or motivation to even read or look through the feedback. So it is a waste of my time, and is not helping my students. This conferencing will be beneficial for them and I also see how this will save me a lot of time!
This morning I had a writing conference with my neighbor Gabrielle, who will be in second grade this year. I asked Gabrielle to write a short story about what she had for breakfast. She wrote about how her mom made her waffles and sausage and she ate with her brother. I complimented Gabrielle for using the words “yummy” and “sticky” in her writing and told her that I could picture her eating her waffles. My advice for Gabrielle was to think about having sentence variety as almost all of her sentences started with I. We talked about how she could use some transition words like then or next to begin her sentences. She understood and then we went on to talk about the upcoming school year and what she was looking forward to. Gabrielle said she was excited to see her teacher and friends. Overall, it was a successful writing conference even though I knew very little about Gabrielle as a student or writer going into the conference. This experience will be helpful practice for this year with my own students.
ReplyDeleteThe nice part about being a special education teacher is that I get to teach ESY during the summer. I choose to do a writing conference with one of my students who will be in the 6th grade. I told him I would like him to write down the best thing he has done all summer and try to convince me I should try it. He wrote about helping on his grandparent’s alpaca farm in Washington State. When I asked him what he was writing about he told me I had to wait until he was completely finished and then he would read it to me. I laughed out loud and told him okay. This showed me he was enjoying this writing exercise. When it was time for him to read it to me, he was able to revise it as he went because he was hearing it out loud. I honestly was just listening because I didn’t want him to feel like I was “scoring” him. When he was finished, I was able to first complement him on his ability to “hear” his errors. He also did a great job of adding details and used words that made me feel like I was actually on the farm. (I have a hard time just picking one thing students do well, I do it is sets of 3 instead). I actually asked him what he thought he needed to improve for next time. He told me he wanted to work on expanding his language that he used in the writing sample. I felt like that was a great idea. I gave him a challenge for the beginning of the school year. I told him to write another sample on any topic he wanted and see if he could add 5 words into his story that he has never used before. I sent him home with one of my thesauruses for help. Like I said before, I love the idea of conferencing with my students. I look forward to doing more of this during the school year.
ReplyDeleteI conducted an informal conference with a friend’s daughter who is going into first grade. She wrote about a special moment this summer-going to the beach with her mom. I found that having a paper with the four focus points (question, compliment, teaching point and for next time) written out helped keep me on track! She knew what she wanted to write about right away and it was easy to give compliments-she spelled many words correctly or used invented spelling for unknown words and she used spaces between each word. The one teaching point we discussed was using a period after each sentence. She wrote 2 sentences but had no punctuation so we went through and reread and added that in. If she were a student in my classroom, I would have liked to have seen her add some more details and write more about her moment. It didn’t take as long as I thought it would and can see how taking notes while conferencing will help the students. I’ve conducted conferences during writing but have never taken notes-I will have to find a form that will work for me.
ReplyDeleteHi Everyone,
ReplyDeleteBoth Jackie and I are big fans of conferring-at all levels. Were glad that your experiences turned out well. (Especially during the summer.) Yes, conferencing can go longer…this is something that we both work on keeping tight and short. Though, I usually tend to go over with mine. I think that’s ok. I love the conversations and insight I gain from our one-on-one conversations.
As was mentioned, it does take time and practice to set up the routines and expectations for conferring time. Give yourself (and the students) 6-8 weeks to establish these procedures. It’s a good idea to talk about potential problems that may occur when you are busy, like what to do when you need to go to the bathroom, or if you don’t understand something (I like to hang a poster that says “Quietly Ask 3 Before You Ask Me.”) Or, if the student needs some materials what they can do. Discussing, practicing and role-playing these scenarios will often help your conferring time go much smoother. Remember to involve the students; they often come up with ideas (and solutions) that we may not even have thought of.
One thing, I don’t think I’ve shared here yet, that I do when I'm conferring (my BIG don't talk to me unless you are bleeding, throwing up or on fire time) is that I have index cards with the #'s 1, 2, 3, 4 on them, laminated and hole-punched with a ring. I hang these either in the front of the room or off the side of my table and if students need to talk to me while I'm conferring they take a number and return to their seat. When I'm ready to and done conferring, I look for #1 and then #2 and so on. This way I remember to check in with whoever needed me (I tend to forget) and the student knows that I will find them so they don't have to sit there with their arm raised and can get busy doing something like reading or other parts of the assignment. (Have you noticed how kids' brains turn off when their hands are raised?) :)