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.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Essentials of Writing Assignment 7
ReplyDeleteIrene Osterman Sussman
I conducted two conferences with a friend’s daughter, Renae, who is 8 years old. I had suggested a few topics to her mother but emphasized that the writing should be something Renae would enjoy doing. The project they decided on was a thank you letter to Renae’s Grandma for taking her to a horseback riding camp for a week.
I followed Regie’s format and began by having Renae read me her letter.
Dear Grandma,
Thank you for taking me to horse camp. I really really really really liked it. It was fun!!!! I love you and horses. From Renae.
My first response was to compliment her on her handwriting. I think she was a bit uncomfortable and I wanted to assure her this would be fun. On reflection, this wasn’t a good way to begin. I recall Regie pointing out that initially focusing on the writing skills can take a student’s mind away from the content. Quite honestly I was a bit taken aback because I had expected more content from a third grader and I was struggling with where to begin. I have had this experience in my own teaching; coming upon a student who has written very little or very low quality for their ability level and trying to come up with a quick compliment before I begin the work of encouraging their progress. It can be challenging! While I found Regie's DVD conferences with second graders helpful, in this situation I didn’t initially implement her ideas.
I decided that one goal that could help her move forward with her writing would be adding details. I began reading her letter, stopped at the end of the second sentence and asked, “What did you like about horse camp.” “It was fun.” “Oh, I see you wrote that” and I read the next sentence. “What was fun about it?” Shrug, “I don’t know.” (This is going to be a long four minutes). Then I had an AHA moment, the audience! That was my weak spot last year and I wasn’t going to let this opportunity slip by.
“Renae, your Grandma is going to love getting a letter from you. Do you think she might want to know some examples of what you liked about horse camp?” “Maybe” (I’m getting somewhere). I pulled out sticky notes – yes I brought them. “Can you tell me some things you did at camp?” Bingo! Out came a flood of exciting horse camp chatter. I couldn’t jot notes fast enough. I let her tell me everything realizing that in a shared conference I most likely wouldn’t let a student go on this long. Then I asked her if she thought her Grandma would like to hear some of these wonderful details in her thank you letter. I then modeled how she could erase the, from Renae, to add details and left her with the sticky notes.
The next day I sat down again with Renae. This time she was much more comfortable and I think she was enjoying the attention. She eagerly read me her letter. In this draft she had included five specific details about her camp activities; everything from brushing the horses to having her horse run into a tree. When I reread her letter I laughed out loud at that part. I complimented her on the details and I talked again about how the letter was for her Grandma to read and that I felt her Grandma would really enjoy it. We decided that her Grandma would laugh about the horse running into the tree when she read it even though Renae had told her the story. I purposefully didn’t mention the word “audience” given Regie’s suggestion about teaching a skill first and labeling it later.
This experience has taught me that personal letters are potentially a wonderful way to focus on the audience. It’s so straightforward! What a great lesson it could be! It also taught me to be prepared. I find this to always be true in teaching, yet my preparation is usually so focused on whole and small group instruction that I let the individual conferences often be “on the fly.” Once again I’m reminded of the chart on page 217 and how a brief glance at it before a conference will help me stay focused on what that student needs.
Irene, this sounds like it turned out to be a wonderful conference. You did a great job getting Renae to think about her reader. :) I agree, I think personal letters would be a fun and engaging lesson!
ReplyDeleteIrene - I read through your comments before I did my conference and really focused on the audience. I think that was SUCH a great insight, and it really helped me focus with my conference! I think always keeping the audience in mind when doing a conference is going to be key. Your conference sounds like it went so great :)
DeleteThank you! The reason I focused on the audience is I need to be ready to model that early on!
DeleteI did one conference...and I took on conferring with my 8 year old son. I was VERY concerned he wouldn't take it seriously, but he did SO amazing! Some background info on him…he is ADHD, is medicated, but wasn’t until second grade, so he is what I would consider a struggling writer (although he has come SO far this year)!!!!!! We decided together that he would write a letter to his grandparents who are living in Southern California. They just sold their house and bought a trailer in preparation for retirement. Before he wrote, we talked through the things he might write. He said he would write about how he couldn’t wait for them to be here and spend more time with him. I then let him get going.
ReplyDeleteI came back about 5 min later to a “finished” letter, that said he couldn’t wait to see them (and a bit more about spending time together). He had the components of a letter (greeting, body, closing), but was missing details. I asked him what else they might like to know. Then I asked him what, in this letter, would make them want to write back? It took a lot, but he finally realized he hadn’t asked them any questions. He went right to work and asked them two questions about their trailer and then asked them to send a picture! I was SO impressed. Finally, we would a word that was misspelled (will) – he had spelled it “wul.” I asked him to sound it out and almost immediately he said it should be “wil” – I told him it was part of an –ill family, and on the left side of his notebook, we did a quick word study, starting with will. I said fill was in the family, he then listed and wrote kill, Bill, dill, and mill. Then we put a heading at the top that said –ill and I told him these were words in the –ill family and he can’t ever spell will wrong again, or will’s friends ;) He LOVED it!
Overall, this was fast, he got a lot out of it, and I can see myself doing this in my classroom VERY easily! I’m excited for school to start, now!
What a great idea to work right away with a child on a word family! I'm sure he was motivated because you were right there helping him discover what he already knew.
DeleteAWESOME! So glad that you are excited to try conferring in your classroom!
DeleteI was able to do a writing conference with one of my students that I a teaching this summer. Since I am working 1:1 with the students, I didn’t have to worry about what the other students were doing, since there aren’t any right now. When I do have other students next year I will have to do a lot of pre-teaching and modeling of expectations so that students know the expected behavior during independent writing time. I decided to use the form that you had provided because it seemed to be more simple and easier to use. Overall, I found that it was really helpful to read the book and watch the videos before doing the conference because it gave me a lot more insight into what it should actually look like. The conference that helped me the most was AlexSandra’s because mine was very similar to that. The student that I’m working with has a lot of difficulty staying on topic and making her ideas clear in her writing, which is what we were working on. She had a really great story to tell and had some really good details that I was able to compliment her on, but she needed help deleting certain parts out of her story and adding in other details to have it make sense. I gave her some good post it notes using her own words and she was able to go back to work and add in some more content to her story. I really liked this format of working with the students because it creates a really easy way to have a conversation with the student about their writing instead of just telling them what they need to fix, which I’m guilty of having done in the past. Knowing the level of support my students need I know I will have to do a lot of these in the beginning, but will hopefully be able to shorten them and space them out more as they get to be more proficient writers. It will also be helpful to see where each of them is struggling, so that it can help to guide my teaching in demonstration and shared writing time with them.
ReplyDeleteTara,
ReplyDeleteI agree, as the student become more confident and you more comfortable and experienced with conferences they will go quicker.