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)
I did a dual conference on the reading and writing that was taking place in the elementary SS class. I had one student who was reading Flora & Ulysses and then writing a paragraph about what she just read. (This was not my lesson)
ReplyDeleteReading. ~ The conference was awkward at first as both of us had never done this before. The student was quiet and didn’t really know what to say about what she was reading. I prompted her to but she was still nervous. I then ask if she could read me what she had just read silently and that after that, she was able to tell me about the whole section she had just read. She is delighted with the book, although she didn’t understand many of the implied meaning that came up in the section. We talked about how to try to figure them out, she did begin to understand a couple of them, but I think this book was just a bit too high level for her. While she understood the words the meaning was tough to understand. Once we got comfortable with each other it was actually pretty fun. This, like all things in the book will need to be practiced many times over in order for me to feel comfortable and really be able to delve into the students reading.
Writing ~ I worked with the same student that I did the reading conference with. She was writing a paragraph about what it would be like to be a squirrel. (Not my lesson) The conference went smoothly and was quite fun. We worked on her writing. She had great ideas, just had a hard time with conventions. She wrote much more that a paragraph, but did not ever do a paragraph break. She just kept writing. (I think she wanted to impress me. LOL) The writing conference was very fun. I was able to help her, and work on her writing. I knew more about how to do the writing one and felt very comfortable. Again, like all the information in both of the books, I will need to reread, and practice. I liked the conferencing. I am looking forward to doing it this coming year.
I'm unable to do a conference at this time with school out. Looking forward to doing it in the Fall.
ReplyDeleteIs their a neighbor, cousin, relative, former student or friend's child you could borrow to do one with? We really think it is well worth the time and effort to complete during the course. The student does not have to be at your grade level. Any age is fine for the experience and it's a pretty quick activity.
DeleteI met with my nephew who is entering 3rd grade. He recently went on a trip to Washington D.C. with his family and wrote about his time there. It was a little awkward to put on my teacher hat instead of my aunt hat, but we worked it out. He was very eager to tell me about his trip and I encouraged him to keep writing because he seemed to have lots of great stories to share. He had vivid descriptions but there was no clear ending. Here is the paraphrased version of our conversation:
ReplyDeleteCompliment: I really like how you described the museums you visited with such detail. It helped me paint a picture in my mind. You also shared how you felt throughout the piece. This made me feel connected to your story and I was sharing in your excitement.
Teaching Point: Your story ends somewhat abruptly. Let’s talk about how you could add a specific closing sentence to end this piece.
For next time: He expressed that he loves comic books and would like to make this story into a comic book series. We talked about how he might break the story apart into sequences and which scenes he would draw.
Sounds like a good conference. Glad you had the opportunity to do it with your nephew. I bet he liked being able to help you with your school work. ;)
DeleteShelley Tate
ReplyDeleteAssignment seven
I worked with my niece, who will be in ninth grade this fall. She loves to write, so it wasn’t difficult to get her to do a conference with me! She was working on some poems about nature that she hoped to get into a school literary journal. I complimented her on some of the images she used and pointed out places where she had some wonderfully vivid word choice.
I did see, however, that she fell into some formulaic writing and had some forced rhymes. I didn’t put it that way to her, however - we talked about all the different types of poetry and I brought out some examples of free verse. It was lovely to see her realize that poetry was much more open than she thought, and that she was free to experiment! Her goal was to play more with language and images, and not feel pressured to conform to a particular format or rhyme scheme.
This was fun, but definitely time-consuming. I can also see there being some issues with students holding back at first (especially in the beginning of the year!). It all comes back to trust and relationships, and finding the time.
Hi Shelley,
DeleteThat's also wonderful you got to confer with your niece. AH, what a powerful lesson for your niece; to learn that she can experiment and play with language. That was an excellent goal for the conference!
Yes, trust and relationships are the basis for everything!
I conducted one writing conference with a 6th grade girl in my neighborhood. She looked tortured when her mom agreed to have her write and talk with me. She seemed to relax a little when I told her she could write anything. She chose to write a letter to her aunt in Alaska. After she wrote for about 30 minutes we conferenced. I had her read me her piece and as she read she edited along the way and continually apologized for her mistakes. She did seem surprised that I complimented her first, especially since she had so many corrections in her first reading. We then talked about her aunt and why she chose to write to her. This seemed to make her relax more and she then began to explain to me even more about what she wanted to write. I encouraged her to use these details she was telling me in her writing. I helped by writing some of her ideas down on a post it. She then asked if she could type her letter in an email. I was of course okay with that since that’s how I send most of my “letters” nowadays.
ReplyDeleteOverall, this conference went really well. I feel like I boosted her confidence a little and didn’t make it as torturous as she thought it would be. It was also a lot of fun for me because in this conference I wasn’t worried about fixing up all the errors. I only wanted to help her with purpose and content. I think these conferences will help my classroom as a whole. It will be very important that my students are engaged in their writing and know the classroom expectations. I don’t think I will start with these type of conferences right in the beginning of the year, I will want the time to set up the expectations before and ensure that the other students will continue to work as I meet. I would like to practice and explore more small group conferences to see how those will work in my classroom. I hope that having small frequent, and then occasional longer conferences will help my students independent writing tremendously.
Taking the time to set up expectations is time well spent! I believe taking the first 6 weeks to establish routine and expectations will help with the rest of the year running smoother.
DeleteI met with a family member who is going into the third grade. He struggles a bit academically, and would much rather be outside playing than reading or writing. Math is his favorite subject. He was excited to tell me about the new play equipment at his house, so I suggested that would be a great topic for him to write about.
ReplyDeleteIt was a little rough getting started because he didn’t seem to know just what he wanted to say. I wondered if it would’ve been better had I not suggested a topic, but I think he may have struggled to get going regardless of my prompting. I didn’t ask, but I suspect he’s one of those students who consistently asks, “How many sentences do we HAVE to write?” A question I heard repeatedly in my second grade classroom.
As soon as he had a few sentences down I read it over, looking for things I could honestly compliment him on. I could see it was going to be like pulling teeth to get him to write even half a page, so I was hunting for something that would encourage and inspire him to write more. He wrote about how he liked how fast the slide was, so I complimented him on expressing his feelings in his writing, and encouraged him to expand on that and put into words how it made him feel when he went down the slide. He smiled a little and then was thoughtful. Not being much of a reader, I think he was struggling to think of words he could use to express himself.
He did ask how to spell a few words, but I told him we would worry about that later, and to just sound it out best he could. After he wrote a few more sentences I thought it was time to have him reread (teaching point) what he’d written. I felt it might inspire him to keep going, and help him see if there was anything he might want to change or add. He didn’t. Clearly he just wanted to finish the conference to get back to playing.
For next time, I will not attempt to do a writing conference on a sunny day in summer. Really though, one thing I want to try next time is to frontload by modeling what writing should look like. I think I’ve avoided doing that because I feel it will just put words in my students’ mouths because they’ll tend to copy me, but they do need to have the process modeled for them, at least at the beginning of the year, so that’s what I intend to do in my classroom.
It can be hard on a beautiful summer day to get some students to write. :D Modeling and sharing great examples of writing is what some students really need. AND if they feel that they need to use our example to help them write, I would allow them to do so. They won't need it forever and if this is the support they need right now to feel successful, that is what my main goal is--to get them feeling safe, secure and capable.
Delete