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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Assignment 7: Student Writing Conference
ReplyDeleteThis is a timely assignment as I am helping my students finish up a writing piece on “friendship.” The task was to write about being a good friend, making friends, or sharing about a friend. Yesterday, I met with several students to check in on how they were doing. Jon was one of them. Jon has struggled with hurrying through writing pieces without looking over them. When we met, I asked him how his piece was going. He told me he was finished. I asked him to read his piece to me and he did. The first thing I noticed was that he had a wonderful beginning sentence. I made a very big deal about this and told I knew exactly what he was going to write about by reading his beginning. As he read through the next 2 sentences, I noticed that he had misspelled several “no excuse” words from our word wall. He was aware as well as soon as I mentioned them. That was his goal; to read through the rest of the paper and make sure he had those words fixed up. I asked him to get ready to share his piece the next day as I wanted to show the others the great example of his beginning. The whole conference took about 4 minutes.
What I took away from this conference was the positive attitude Jon had when he went back to his table to finish. Somehow, he didn’t see my asking him to edit his spelling as a negative, but a way to prepare for sharing his work with others. Jon rushes through other subject work as well, so we talked briefly about how looking over finished work could improve his learning.
The brief conferences I’ve had this week with students have actually sparked some amazing conversations with the whole group. Writing is hard work whether you’re a first grader or a first grade teacher! Right now, there is a bit of a buzz and excitement about writing that I’m going to hope continues.
In an effort to go from the revising and editing steps to get kids to the final copy step, I did about ten conferences over the span of a class and half with my fifth graders last week. When conferencing I tried to apply some of Routman’s tips. Strategies I used include; complimenting students on their ideas/content, asking them if I could write on their papers, trying to focus on content more than editing mistakes, reminding students of the intended purpose and audience of their writing, and having students read their drafts to me. For the most part, I found that these strategies helped students feel good about their writing and helped steer them in the direction of improvement.
ReplyDeleteOther suggestions of Routman’s I found difficult to perform in the midst of a 55 minute class period. Having students read their writing twice was just not an option with the allotted time I have. That meant I would either stop their reading to discuss midway through, or go back and speedily coach them once reading was completed. The other thing I found really difficult was to not have the majority of my comments based on fixing errors. After looking for a places to revise – mostly lengthening sentences or encouraging them to clarify ideas, we jointly edited mistakes students did not find on their own. While I tried to be tough with my students in terms of finding and fixing editing mistakes on their own, there were still many that went unfixed. A major category of mistakes was spelling. In terms of long, difficult words, I’ll fix the mistakes for them.
Two student conferences stuck out, one was Tim’s. He had put together a good essay with strong arguments. Where his paper could benefit the most from my help though was clarifying and strengthening his arguments by making some of his sentences longer and more well thought out (he’s an ESL student and this is a common skill deficit). After pumping Tim up about his strong overall writing I looked for places where he could expand his writing. I also pointed out mistakes he could fix.
Another student, Lynne, is unique because she’s a selective mute. There was a lot of nodding and shaking of her head during her conference (helping her is difficult in general). I used Routman’s strategy of helping kids with paragraphing when I saw that Lynne had transition words but no paragraphing. “Is this where your writing is talking about a new idea?” I asked. When she nodded I asked, “can I write new paragraph here to make it easier for the reader?”
The major point of frustration with conferencing 5th graders was time, time, time. I like to use conferencing as a means to check writing so that final copies will be of good quality. Conferencing, especially with struggling writers (I have many) is a very time consuming process. I simply can’t get to everyone. I can’t get to half or even a third of students in one class period. One thing I suppose I can try to combat time restraints is conferencing with students earlier in the writing process.
chose a little girl who has had great anxiety coupled with stubbornness to conference with today. We were writing letters to our principal because she broke her leg. The lesson was about using letter writing as a way to show gratitude, well wishes and thankfulness. (thank you Regie!) Students were super excited to get started! I watched her dive into writing and after about 7 minutes I asked her how her writing was going. I instantly said, “oh Chloe, can I show this to the class?” She smiled and nodded her head. I put her paper under the doc camera and projected it for all to see. I instantly gushed about her beautiful handwriting and finger spaces which made reading her paper super easy. Again, she smiled… I read the paper to the class and she was glowing! I took her paper back to her and asked her if she could add some punctuation… maybe a period at the end of your sentences…She smiled, nodded her head and got right back to work.
ReplyDeleteToday I did quite a few conferences, but Chloe was the perfect example of a positive response to positive affirmations that even though I gave her a suggestion as how to continue to improve and grow, she was open and willing to try it. There has been many times she digs her heels in and refuses to take suggestions, but today she was amazing!
That's awesome Karen! So glad that you are seeing such positive results from conferring! (And I'm impressed you were able to keep the conference under 5 min. This is something both Jackie and I have worked at, keeping the conferences short and tight. :D)
ReplyDeleteBrian, I'm a little unclear about what you mean regarding not having time for your students to read through their piece twice. You can always pick a part or one page of their writing to confer about and discuss. You might even ask students which part would they like feedback on? Or, do they have a section they are really proud of? Hopefully, over time it will become easier for you to focus just on one or two areas that are the most important at that time to help move the student forward in their writing. Trying to correct everything at once is overwhelming for students and likely to sap the joy out of writing.
You are correct, time is always an issue. :) Even with struggling students we want to try to keep the conference time short. Every teacher needs to come up with a system of conferring that works for them, but I wouldn't expect to confer with every single student in one class period. Or even half the class in one day. I would also def. confer with students throughout the whole writing process, not just at the end when they are at a final draft.
One system teachers use is a posted list of the steps in the writing process and clothes pegs that have the students' names on them. The students move the pegs to each step of the writing process where they are so that the teacher knows exactly where they are at that time. Conferring can also be listed with the steps so that the students can indicate they'd like to meet with the teacher. This can be at any time of the process. While teachers have some sort of schedule or check-sheet that they use to be sure the get to confer with all students, allowing students the opportunity to initiate a request for teacher time is important. I'm not sure if this is clear. I'm happy to chat on the phone with you if you would like to discuss this more.
Hello LeAndra,
That does sound like a fabulous conference! Exactly what we want- to build self-confidence, praise and offer a suggestion or two as to how to improve the piece. Well done!
Writing conference:
ReplyDeleteHurrying through writing just to be the first one done has been has been an ongoing problem with a few of my students. I had modeled that when writers feel that all their thoughts are written down, reading aloud the writing will help catch parts of our writing that don’t make sense. During a whole group conferencing, a young lady, named Piper, was reading her writing and stopped mid sentence. She had an odd expression on her face. When I asked her why she stopped, she explained that she forgot to write something. She looked like she felt bad about it. I told her that stopping when it doesn’t make sense is what good writers do and we really celebrated that moment!!! It was a perfect example how reading our writing aloud can help us check to make sure our writing makes sense. She beamed as we celebrated. She had her pencil and quickly made the changes. When she read it again it made sense. We again compared the before and after. Not only did she feel proud that her mistake was celebrated and not a bad thing at all, but it helped reinforce that strategy of reading aloud, to the entire class! I loved it!
I met with a young man, named Tommy, who is constantly interrupting me to ask how to spell words. Students are supposed to use their skills to sound out the word and then circle it if they still think it is wrong. I sat down next to him to conference with him. For Tommy, circling wasn’t good enough. He had to know exactly how to spell words. During the conference, my goal was to reinforce that his spelling skills were above adequate. As he read and we got to his circled words, I asked him to sound out the circled words. He was correct most of the time and super close the rest of the time. By taking that time to sit with him, he felt more confident than before to trust his knowledge of phonics. He was also quite proud of himself and had a huge smile on his face.
Both of these two students needed a little confidence. I think with continued conferencing and celebrations, all students will feel these successes while writing. It gives me hope!!
YEAH! It sounds like these conferences were excellent. Yes, just giving a little time to the students one-on-one helps them develop the confidence they need to take the chances with their writing. :D I also think with continued conferring and celebrations your class will grow and feel successful.
ReplyDelete