How does conferencing with students change student writing?

[Carol]

During the last school year, I worked closely with 6 teachers who were working on conducting writing conferences with their students.  We met once a month to discuss our goals for conferencing and read a chapter from a book titled, One to One- The Art of Conferring with Young Writers.  I had the opportunity to observe these teachers at the end of the school year and I gathered a few student samples to show how their conferencing made a difference in their student writing.

 

I am planning to give an inquiry demonstration this year.  My question is, "How does conferencing with students change student writing?"  I have been working with teachers this year on a conferencing technique used in the Lucy Calkins Units of Study.  This technique is called "Architechture of a Conference".  I am thinking I will share the structure during my demo and share my student samples from my observations of teachers using the structure.  I plan to include you, the participants, in the inquiry process by showing you different ways a teacher can learn to conference and ask you to help me refine my process.

[Tracey Albee]

Carol,

 

This is definitely a topic that should be researched. I totally agree that conferencing with students changes their writing but am interested in the facts on it. Nowadays it is so hard to conference with students about their writing because of everything we have to teach in the classroom. I feel like conferencing is super important and does help students. I don't conference with my students on their writing because of the time constraint.

 

However I found this year that conferencing with them on their grades really helped them. I taught Freshman for the first time this year and as many of us know they are forgetful and can be lazy at times. I decided to conference with my students on a bi-weekly basis about their grade in class really helped them get assignments turned in and stay on top of their work. I wish I could do this for their writing too. When I conference with my students it is for a minute or two; I am a little concerned that conferencing with them on their writing would take much longer. I am interested in seeing the length of time a teacher should conference with their students on their writing. Again, I love the idea but have reservations about the length of time it would take. I am super excited to get these questions answered and to see your demonstration. I hope that this is doable in my classroom because I can definitely already see the benefits of conferencing.

 

Tracey Albee

[Megan Garijo Pruitt]

I am so glad to get back to studying the topic of conferencing through your demo, Carol.  When I think of helping teachers ensure conferencing as part of their writing instruction, I think about the facets of management that make it possible.  I believe Lucy C. describes some things in the area of management that teachers can do to allow one-to-one conferencing to occur.  One thing that comes to my mind is to ensure students can cycle through the writing process with independence.  This takes a lot of teaching so that students know what to do after they complete a graphic organizer for the pre writing stage or if they have edited, they know how to move to the next step independently.

 

Another management piece that helps teachers ensure that purposeful conferencing can occur is some sort of record-keeping system.  This lets teachers know exactly what to conference about with each student.  To get the student invested in their writing success, it can also be powerful to have the student keep a goal sheet in their notebook and reflect on it when the teacher comes to confer.  Students can glean learning just sitting at a table in which a teacher might be conferencing with a small group or one student.  They like to listen in on others' conferences : )

 

I can't wait to learn more through your demo so that I can help teachers set their writing instruction up in a way that makes conferencing manageable and effective in improving their students' writing!

 

Thanks for sharing!

Megan

[Courtney Hurlbert]

I can't wait to participate in your demonstration, Carol. This fits directly into our school's Schoolwide Plan for the upcoming school year. We are all working with strategies to improve our school's 5th grade writing scores. I am also curious about this because I have begun using Daily 5 in my classroom. I was able to conference with individual students more in their Reading this year and missed the Writing Conference aspect. It is always such an exciting challenge fitting all of these intricate pieces together. I look forward to learning some new things from you in the weeks to come.

Courtney