Professional Literature Groups Posting #2

Writing Workshop: The Essential Guide

Chapter 5 Conferring With Writers

The writing conference is an essential part of the writing workshop. It is a one-on-one meeting with a student to help guide them the student in his/her writing. Some teachers might feel uncomfortable conferring in this way because they do not remember it from their own schooling experience.

Things to remember:

1.     Listen-The writing workshop puts children in an active role and has the teacher be the facilitator. The conference gives us a chance to show that we are listening to the student.

2.   Be Present as a Reader-Respond the way you would respond to any other piece of reading that you like.

3.   Build on the strengths of the student you are conferring with.

The suggestions given that I can use for my own third graders as writers were:

*Focus on the most important thing

*Separate different ideas to different stories

*Teaching students to cut and tape to add different information.

I do confer with my students but find these suggestions helpful. I don’t always like to do one-on-one conferences, partly because I am not sure what my students what help on besides editing. This chapter gave important ideas that I can use to help improve my writing conferences.