Ep 63: Conducting Writing Conferences: A Simple Goal-Driven Approach: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.
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Well, hey there and welcome back to another episode of The Classroom Commute Podcast. You are in the right place today if you are ready to learn some quick and actionable steps to make your writing conferences a big success in your classroom. Last week on the podcast in Episode 62, I talked about an important component of both your readers workshop and your writers workshop. We talked all about how to set up a share chair in your classroom so that students can share what they're working on in their independent reading and writing with the rest of the class, get feedback, and just really build that classroom culture of relying on each other to become better readers and writers. Today, I want to focus specifically on another component of your writers workshop, and that is Writing Conferences. You do these in your readers workshops as well when you conference with students but because they're so specific to readers or writers, I want to make sure that we focus specifically on writers workshop today and what a writing conference would look like with your students.
What the heck are we supposed to be doing during a writing conference? You know you're supposed to have them. You hear it's important part of writers workshop, but what actually should you be doing? Making the time to meet with individual students during writers workshop is crucial to helping each student grow as a writer. Of course, you're going to have those mini lessons where you direct and instruct the entire class, but each student is unique and has their own individual needs so you do need to make time to hone in on each students specific needs. The best way to do that is through a writing conference. Now, as a new teacher, I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing during these conference meetings. I would typically just spend my time editing student writing with my big ole fat red pen before moving on to the next student. What were the students doing at this time? They were just basically watching me mark up their paper. Not good. There was no conversation about why the student was interested in his or her writing topic, no talk of writing goals, the conference was completely teacher-led. If that sounds familiar and you feel at a loss as to what you're supposed to be doing during writing conferences, then listen closely as I walk you through how to conduct a goal-driven, student-led writing conference with your students.
It all starts with making a schedule. You don't want to just plan on conferencing with students when you can just fit it in. Both you and the students need to know when you will be meeting ahead of time. Writers workshop, unlike readers workshop, a lot of the times, is more independent work focus, meaning there aren't as many centers like you find in a reader's workshop. They're mostly spending their time working on their writing pieces, applying new skills and strategies that they've learned into their own individual writing. You're not always going to be meeting with small groups and writing like you would in readers workshop so you can plan on conferencing with students almost every day. Since you have that time while students are working independently, your time is best used individually conferencing with different students. If you want to know more about how to structure your writers workshop, be sure to check out Episode 30, where I really go into how to start, launch, and prepare for writers workshop in your classroom. I don't want to go into too much detail here because I really did a deep dive in Episode 30, so make sure you check that out. Of course, writing conferencing is one component of your overall structure for writers workshop so you first want to begin by creating a writing conference schedule where you plan to meet with about three to five students each day. Writers workshop is typically forty five minutes long, sometimes an hour, it varies depending on how you have it set up in your classroom but you can plan on meeting with about three to five students for about five to eight minutes. It's not a long time. Conferences should be bite sized and focused so five to eight minutes should be plenty of time to quickly review student writing. Give students one or two action steps to work on, any more than that and you're going to overwhelm your students. If you just plan for that five to eight minute conference time and you keep it super, ultra laser focused, you'll be much more successful than trying to have a longer conference with a whole lot more information for your students to absorb. In addition to having a conference schedule that both myself and my students are aware of and have posted up in the classroom, I also have my own master class list with each student's name on it. Each time I conference with the student, I'll put that day of our conference next to their name. This gives me an at-a-glance look for who's in need of a conference or who I've been meeting with a lot and maybe somebody who I've been neglecting over time. Those stronger writers often we will say to ourselves, 'Oh, we don't need to be with them. They're doing great on their own. They're taking the skills and strategies and able to apply them.' but they still need those touch points with you because, number 1, it does make sure that they are still on track but it also tells them that their writing is just as important as students who may be struggling a little bit. Make sure that you are meeting with every student on a regular basis. That's not to say that you aren't going to have more touch points with those students who are really struggling, but you make sure that you are rotating in those other stronger writers as well. Make a schedule, stick with it, and keep track of it.
Your next step to conducting a writer's conference is to prepare. You'll want to have your own binder of conference notes that you complete each time you have a conference with your students. This can be a very informal collection of notes and observations about things that you are noticing in your students writing. For me, I had a binder with a divider for each student. In each student's section, I had a conference form, actually several copies of this conference form so I had them ready to go. The form was essentially just a piece of paper with several sections on the paper, one for each conference meeting in each section. I would just jot down notes of things that we were observing or things that I worked on with the students during our conference and before each conference. You'll want to review those notes that you've been taking over time, specifically from the previous conference, so that you can walk into your conference with a plan of action. You're going to see how they're coming on a specific skill that you're working on or check to see if they finished making those revisions or corrections that you suggested in the last conference. I also had my students keep track of their own conference notes, which we'll talk about in a minute, where I had written down in kid-friendly language, what we had talked about and what they were to work on based on our conference. Having those notes of our conference written in their own notebook helped them to stay focused on what they were to be working on when we were not meeting. Since students also knew when we would be meeting ahead of time because they had the schedule posted somewhere in the classroom as well, they would also be instructed to prepare by looking over their notes. We didn't have to waste time at the beginning of our conference saying, 'Okay, let's look what we talked about last time.' or 'Remember last time we talked about ...', we could just dive right in and review the progress that they had made.
All right, let's talk about the actual conference itself. First, I don't think you'll be surprised when I say this, but before you actually start doing writing conferences with your students you'll need to set routines and procedures of what this should look like in your classroom. I've talked about routines and procedures so much on this podcast and on the blog. If you want a deep dive on establishing routines and procedures in your classroom, make sure you check out Episode 27. I also have a blog post with a free routines and procedures checklist that you can download from our Members Resource Library as well. You can just go to classroomnook.com/podcast/63 and you'll see those links there. As it relates to conferences, you need to set those routines and procedures for where you'll be meeting, what materials are needed for the conference, how students will know when they have a conference, and what the expectations are for students who are not having a conference, meaning they need to know that they shouldn't be interrupting you if possible. Instead of having students come to you at the back table, to your desk, or wherever you would normally meet with them, go to where the students are. There's a couple of reasons for this. One, students take forever to get from point A to point B, you'll be wasting valuable time. By going to them, you'll be shaving off minutes of transition time if you just quietly flutter from one student to the next. Two, by having them stop where they are and coming to you, it breaks their focus of where they are in their writing. If you go to them, they're already in the groove and you can just dive right in.
All right, let's talk about the conference itself. You're there with your students, the temptation when going into a writing conference is for us, the teacher, to be the leader. We tell them, 'Okay, you do this, let's work on this and so on'. I'm going to suggest that you first ask students to tell you about their writing. Simply ask, 'How's your writing going? What are you working on in your writing? Tell me a little bit about this piece'. This gives you the insight about how they're feeling about what they're currently working on. Let them start the conversation. Make the conference about them. You want to meet the students where they are and you will often see where they are by letting them take the lead after they've shared a little bit about their writing. Then you can ask some follow up questions or share any comments based on what they've shared with you. If they seem super excited to read a portion of their writing, you have a good idea as to how they feel about it and you can feed off that energy moving forward in your conference. If they struggle to say anything at all or seem frustrated and defeated, then you can take a much different approach and help point out some of the things that they are doing right to give them that little boost of confidence. Again, this is why it's so helpful to begin the conference by having them tell you about their writing. If you go into a conference with a student who is already feeling defeated and then you launch in with an, 'Okay, let's fix this. Let's work on that and check to make sure you finished X, Y and Z', you're going to leave that conference with your student feeling defeated, if not even more so. Read the room, so to speak, so that you are approaching your time together in the best way.
After you've had that quick initial start to your conference with the student-led portion where they're sharing their writing. The main thing that's going to drive your conference time is the discussion about writing goals. Now, I would spend a great deal of time at the beginning of the school year, discussing what writing goals are, how to pick the best goals for each student and so on. We would spend multiple mini lessons doing this and me modeling it. We would talk about how to choose a writing goal based on their needs, how to create a plan of action to meet their goals and we talked a lot about how to reflect on our goals. Again, this was a huge part of setting the foundation to writers workshop, which I covered greatly in my getting started in writers workshop unit. If you need a little help on that and some guidance, I will link to that resource in the show notes. Once we got to their writing conferences, by the time we were ready to begin writing conferences in our classroom, they already had that foundation of what a goal was and how to pick one for themselves. Inside their writer's notebook, students would see a list of these sample writing goals that they could choose from. Of course, these were just suggestions, but it was a great starting point and then students could tweak and make them their own. These goals included things like writing presentation goals, these were goals that helped students to actually improve on the way their writing looks so like letter spacing and completely erasing before they actually began to write again, things like that. You always have those students who need those writing presentation goals because their writing looks a mess. Then we had writing convention goals and these were the goals that helped students to master different grammar and punctuation skills. We had spelling and vocabulary goals that students would sometimes work towards, things like using word walls and thesaurus' to help them choose different words, improve on their word choice, and learn some of those spelling words that should be automatic at this point. We had writing structure goals, these were goals that help students to focus on the actual organization of their writing so they needed to make sure they had a beginning, a middle, and the end. They added details and dialogue, things like that. We also had writing behavior goals, these were goals that many students needed to help them really focus on how they're acting and behaving during writers workshop so that they could be better writers by being more focused. At any point they could go through any of these goals, it was really based on their particular needs. These goals were what drove the conference instruction. You really should be only focusing on one, maybe two goals for each student at a time. For example, they might have a behavioral goal and a writing convention goal, or they might be working on both a spelling vocabulary goal and a writing presentation goal but any more than that and it becomes too challenging to focus your instruction. Remember, these are five to eight laser focused minutes and you only are going to have time to tackle one or two goals. I do plan to do an entire episode on how to help your students choose and work on writing goals so stay tuned for that in the upcoming weeks. If you want a head start and you want to see a list of all those goals, the best place to go is my student writers notebook resource or my writers workshop unit, which actually includes that writer's notebook and a lesson on how to teach the writing goals. I'll link to both of those in the show notes. All that to say, your writing conference discussion should stem from your students writing goals. You're going to model for them in their own writing how to achieve their goals and you're going to give them strategies that help them practice their goal. Being goal driven makes it a whole lot easier to know what to do during your conferences. You're not just going in with, 'Well, let's just look at your writing and see where it leads'. It helps you to know where to put your attention and it helps your students know what to focus on. Goals are the key. You're also going to look for evidence in their writing where they're already meeting their goals or working towards meeting their goals and point out places where they can improve even more and of course, model it.
All right, you are going to leave your conference with your students with a call to action. Before you leave, give students an action step for what they should be doing between now and when you meet again. These action steps should stem from their writing goals and be in writing on their conference sheet, inside their writer's notebook or wherever you have them keeping track of writing conferences. My students sheet was very simple, there's a place to record the date that we met, a place to record any notes about things that we talked about, or examples I want for them to include in their own writing so that they can refer back to it. Then there's a place for us to record their next steps. It's not enough to just tell them what they should be doing. It needs to be in clear step by step writing. I had my students refer to their conference notes almost daily, so they never were thinking to themselves, what should I be working on? What you don't want to do is spend all this time completing their conference notes, having great conversations, and then get to your next conference time and the student has never referred to their conference notes and they don't know what they should be doing. The last thing that I would leave them with is a date for when I will be meeting with them again. Of course, this is subject to change because things happen, but do your best to stick with your meeting schedule. That's going to show your students how valuable you see the conference time and it's going to make them value it as well so make sure they know when you'll be meeting again. If you give them the expectation that you'll be looking for evidence that they worked on what you've discussed in your meeting, it increases the likelihood that they will actually get to work and stay focused. Of course, before you move on to the next student, make sure you jot down notes in your own conference notebooks so that you remember what you talked about when you go to refer to it later. These notes will be helpful when you're ready to conference with them again. It will also be a great reference for any parent-teacher conferences or CSC or intervention meetings that you have on down the road too.
All right, let's wrap this up. If you're feeling like, 'What the heck am I supposed to be doing during writing conferences?', then you have your marching orders and it all begins with making a schedule. A schedule you'll stick to, that you and your students are aware of, posted somewhere in your classroom and you keep track of who you're meeting with. Your second step is to come prepared to your conference knowing the goals that your students are working toward so that you can make those goals the center of your discussion without wasting any time when you're actually conducting the conference. Let students be the leader, let them tell you about their writing and not the other way around. Ask follow up questions, take their lead and be sensitive to any feelings that they may have surrounding their writing. Keep the conversation and discussion focused on their goals and keep those goals to only one or two. Put those things that you are discussing during your conferences in kid-friendly language and instruct students to refer to it often. Of course, keep your own notes as well. Then finally, put in writing the action steps that you want students to work on. Remember, these action steps should be geared toward helping them reach their writing goals. When you put the focus on writing goals, it makes it so much easier to know what to spend your time discussing and what to spend your time on in your conference's. Goal focused conferences will lead to results. Of course, don't leave your conference without putting a date on the calendar, both in the student's notebook as well as on your own calendar of when you're going to meet next and do your best to stick to that date.
All right, I know that I covered a lot. If you want some resources to help get you there faster, to help you feel more successful in your writing conferences, make sure you check out the student writers notebook as well as the writers workshop unit. Both come as printable and digital options so it's easy to do conferences even if you are working virtually at this time, and then it'll transfer nicely when you are back in the classroom.
All right. That's all I have for you today. I hope you have a wonderful rest of the day and I will be back again next week with another episode. Same time, same place. Bye for now.
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