As I’ve learned and grown in both teaching and coaching, I’ve discovered several things that bog down my conferences–and learned some easy-to-implement strategies for each to make conferring run more smoothly.
Category: conferring
Understanding Conference Roles for Effective Student-Teacher Collaboration
All students need an opportunity to know their role in a writing conference so they can set the agenda and receive whatever they need most from you when they have a one-to-one writing conference.
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Find Different Words
I missed a teachable moment. Now that I know better, it's time that I do better.
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How do I confer with ALL students regularly?
In many classrooms, it's hard to equitably distribute one's time among the students. There are always a few kids who need more attention. Here are seven ways you can use to ensure all of your students have the opportunity to confer with you on a regular basis.
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The Language to Develop Agency: Amping Up Agency Blog Series
Teachers can build and increase students’ agency by using specific phrases at when conferring, leading small groups, or holding reflection/share sessions at the end of a workshop.
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Shake Up the Structure of Workshop
Writing workshop is not about playing someone else’s setlist. Workshop is a flexible set of practices that are meant to be improvised. The structure of workshop is one more way teachers can customize learning for those currently in the room.
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Enlist Students as Partners in Conferring
Conferring is a powerful tool to meet the needs of individual writers, but it often feels like students are passive participants in these conversations. Engaging students as partners in this work helps kids see themselves as authors and grow their writing abilities.
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Sharing Anecdotal Notes To Shift From Mine To Ours: Resetting Our Workshop Practices
How can we build even more self-efficacy with our student writers? A few simple moves can transform your anecdotal notes and empower you
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The Conference, Theirs
Even as the year winds down, third-grade teacher Danielle and I are working to make her inquiry-based approach to workshop even more student centered. How? By taking the necessity of record-keeping beyond the merely manageable and transforming the workshop through student-engaged assessment. Which of Danielle’s practices will you explore as you close out your year?
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My Conferring Toolkit: Our Favorite Things Blog Series
In this post, I'll share everything that's inside my conferring toolkit for writing workshop, as well as how I organize it all.
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Top Three Predictable, Beginning of Year Conferences: Our Favorite Things
My favorite conferences are all closely connected to my beliefs about writing instruction. The teaching points in each conference are ideas I want to be front and center for kids as we co-construct the workshop and community we will live and play in over the coming months (at any grade level).
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Improved Conferences: Reflections and Shifts As We Move Forward
As the 2020-21 school year progressed, some teachers reported improved one-to-one conferences when they were conducted through a screen. As students and teachers became more comfortable sharing their screens and recording videos, virtual conferences felt more natural. There are some aspects of virtual writing conferences that can be carried forward once everyone is back to school in-person 100% of the time and/or the masks get to come off indefinitely.
TWO WRITING TEACHERS 