Reflection on Conferring

8/19/2013

Conferring.  Just thinking about it makes me nervous and question my ability to teach. I have seen many "greats" such as Kathleen Tolan and Katherine Bomer confer with students.  I am always in awe and questioning whether some day I will ever have the ease that that they do.

I do believe that conferring is important and valuable for both me and my students.  How can I get better?

Well, one thing I decided to do was tackle Carl Anderson's book - How's It Going?  

This is another book that I bought after attending the week long writing institute at Teacher's College in the summer of 2010. I loved hearing him speak and went and bought the book immediately.  However, I didn't read it immediately.  Now hear I am in the summer of 2013, inspired to catch up on my professional reading.  Thank you foot tendon surgery for giving me the gift of time!

Here are my takeaways and thoughts while reading his book.

1) We confer with students to help them become better writers - not to fix one piece of writing.  

"When we finish a conference, we should be able to name what it is we did to help that student become a better writer." (Page 9)

Conference Pitfalls -

1) getting caught up in what the story is about

2) wanting to fix EVERYTHING

I'm super guilty of wanting to fix the grammar/punctuation when I first sit down with a piece of work.  I need to remember to take a deep breath and LISTEN. Be a researcher and be present when the student is talking about their work.  

2) Conferences have a predictable structure

I like structure. Knowing that I should be able to conference in the same way every time comforts me.

Part 1:

Conversation about the work the child is doing as a writer

Part 2: Conversation about how the child can become a better writer.

When choosing  the line of thinking for part 2 I will be faced with several option.  Something to think about is: what can I teach this child that will keep them moving forward in their work?  I may choose one option and then note other options for future conferences. There is no wrong direction - I have to release myself of this guilt.

Students need to understand that they have a role in these conferences.  Students will feel more ready to talk to me when they know what the expectations are.  I think that having a mini lesson on this is a good thing.  I need to hold the kids accountable for being aware of what they are doing in their writing.  

"The success of a conference often rests on the extent to which students sense that we are genuinely interested in them as writers - and as individuals." (page 22)

I care about my students.  I need to make sure that I leave every conference knowing that each child feels listened to and cared for.  

3) Students need to be taught that they too have a role in a conference.

I know that many students feel awkward in their initial conferences but that soon fades away as they become more comfortable with what their job is when I sit to confer with them.

One way to teach them this is to "Give mini lessons that help students understand their conference role" (pg 87)  I've done this in the past and know that it is effective - and the kids seem to enjoy being models for this activity.

He offers four conversational strategies to support students:

1) Reflect and Pause (pg 100)

2) Show and Describe

3) Refer back to the last conference

4) Naming what I observed

4) Mentor texts - Mentor Texts - Mentor Texts - Did I mention Mentor Texts!!

In my last few years of teaching I became more comfortable using mentor texts.  All of a sudden it just made sense to use well written pieces of writing to help model my own writing - DUH!  I love the idea of having kids explore mentor texts before the start of a unit - letting them discover what is important in a writing style.  I do, however, need to keep better track of the mentor texts that I do use.  This year I hope to track my use of mentor texts and starting developing more mentor text stacks.

5) Mini (not maxi) lessons are essential

Structure of a mini lesson:

Connection

Teaching point

"Have a go" or "let's try this"

Link to independent work

6) Record Keeping

I have tried many things to keep track of my conference notes.  All work well - but not great.  THis year I have the unique challenge of working with a co-teacher.  How are we both going to confer and share our notes we take on individual kids.  My latest idea is to use Evernote.  We can create a shared notebook with pages for the kids.  We could even have a notebook for each kid- with different notes such as "Sally - Writing Sem 1", etc.  I really like this idea - and I hope my co-teacher will be as excited.

To support the use of the ipad and evernote I actually just bought (and now am using for the first time) an ipad keyboard. What a difference that makes!  Something to think about for all the kids if we really want them typing a ton on their ipads.  I'm loving it so far - so much faster to record my ideas on a real keyboard rather than the ipad touchscreen keyboard.

Bottom line - My goal in a conference is to help students become better writers.