Thursday, May 19, 2016

Assignment Seven: Writing Conference

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.

2 comments:

  1. Assignment Seven: The first conference I did was with a student who had three sentences of a letter written down. He felt that he was done with his letter prior to sitting down with me. To be quite honest it was hard for me to find something to compliment him on, but I wound up complimenting him on choosing to thank his mom (his audience) for buying him a particular type of toy. The other two sentences were not connected and were mostly complete sentences but were not developed thoughts. So I asked him to tell me more about what he meant. He told me some more details regarding these topics and I wrote them down on sticky notes. He talked willingly about the additional details but when I suggested that he consider adding in what he had told me, he was very resistant. I explained that his mom might not know what he meant if he didn’t add in extra details. He was starting into an escalation at that point so I had to switch gears into more managing behavior rather than conferring.
    To me the conference felt overall like a frustrating experience, apparently it did to my student as well. But I do think it has given me further ideas for ways I can teach with the large group. I could start off a minilesson with a mocked up piece of writing that has just a few sentences strung together and then we could talk with the class about how well the audience might or might not understand the letter. Basically I don’t think this student or several others in my class can see very well how their letter might come across to their audience. THey don’t realize the lack of information is confusing. So they need to be taught that and then they need more shared writing experiences of adding in more explanation and detail.
    So the conference has guided me to how I might better instruct the whole class. If my class were larger or it were only a few kids who had this issue then I could make it small group instruction instead. I think it was the conference specifically that helped me decide this topic needed to be tackled with the whole group because while I knew this was an issue for many of my students, this particular student’s behavior in response to me suggesting that he add in more details alerted me that not only was he not doing it, but that he didn’t know how, and further that he didn’t even see the point in doing so. The conference was a little bit like being in the trenches with my students, I walked away from it with a deeper understanding of what this student’s needs were than I would have had if I had simply read his paper by myself after the period was over.
    One thought I had about future conferences I might hold is if possible I would like to be able to have a general idea before going into it of what I’m going to compliment the student on and at least a couple choices in mind already for what the teaching point will be. I’m afraid if I don’t I’ll be in the conference and find myself unable to figure out how to explain to the student what they could do to improve. I expect once I have more experience I won’t feel this way as much though.

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  2. While the conference didn't turn out how you had hoped it is good that you came away with new information of how to instruct the students around the meaning of their message for their audience. I agree, the more you confer, the easier and more automatic it will be for you.

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