Deciding WHAT to Teach without Nitpicking

By: Kelsey Ferguson

After reading Ralph Fletcher’s The Writing Workshop, I began to see writing time in my classroom in a whole new light.  Instead of writing being a silent working time, I began to teach my students to confer with one another on their writing, use their experiences as ideas, share their stories with the class and conference with me about their writing.  The result has been much higher engagement in writing block.  My students are enjoying what they are writing much more when they have the choice to write about any topic of their choice and guide themselves through the writing process.  I was excited to further the progression of my students’ writing and the success of writing block by reading How’s It Going? by Carl Anderson.  I feel like this book hits the high points of what I struggle with as a teacher in writing time.  Conferences are by far the most difficult part for me as I struggle with the line between pushing my students to become better writers and fighting the urge to correct their writing.  Three things in particular in these chapters informed my practice as a writing instructor – the idea that conferences are based in conversation, questioning processes, and deciding what to teach.

Often times, my conferences turn into me talking to my students about their writing rather than my students talking to me about their writing.  According to chapter one of How’s It Going?, conferences are to be used to give students the opportunity to talk to you about what they are doing and their thought processes in their writing.  Teachers listen carefully, ask clarifying questions, and then pursue the line of thinking that the student is already on.  The guidance comes from a place of student guidance.  I am going to work this week on stepping back more in my writing conferences so that my students are the main proponents and are responsible for the brain work going into what’s happening.

Secondly, I was pointed by the questioning guidance on page 42-43 of How’s It Going?.   Questioning comes from a place of understanding where the student is and working with what they have given you already. The questions focus on strategies of a writer and how they view themselves and their work as writers.  They are not pointed at grammatical skills or generic writing “rules” or structures.  Instead, they are concerned with guiding a thought process and broader ranging skills.  The skills span from different pieces to work as well. For instance, asking a child “Have you done some of the revision work that you tried on your last piece?” connects the student with work that they have already done while furthering their work, practice and understanding on a new piece of writing.

I also struggle with deciding WHAT to comment on with my students’ writing.  What skill do they need most at this time to help them become a better writer?  How would this piece of writing benefit most?  Anderson points out sources of knowledge to guide these decisions – what we know about good writing, what we know about the writing process, what we know about how children grow and develop as writers, and what we’ve learned about the student as a writer thus far.  I definitely need more development in these categories.  It requires a lot of understanding of where students need to be in order to be on grade level but also how children develop as writers.  I am coming to more understanding of where my students are as writers as the year progresses.  I am coming to more understanding of what they need to be successful as writers. 

Now the struggle is to fight the urge to nitpick writing conventions but work with my students to develop into lifelong writers.  I like this jumping board to change how my writing conferences are going with my students.  I want to work more with and think more about exactly what skills I want to help my students develop over the course of this year so I can have more of a plan going into the conversations – not as a way to guide the conversation myself but to fuse them with what my students are saying and working on in their own pieces.