How to confer and how to guide students into thinking as writers by Laura Arce

Even though there are lots of extremely important points in this reading, I decided to focus in the one I need immediate improvement, and this is conferring, helping students understand what a conference is, what are our roles in a conference are, and how to think as a writer, and to explicitly talk about their writing process instead of their content.  

I completely agree with Anderson when he mentions that it is very important for us to still confer with the students, even if it is the first day of a Writer’s Workshop and even if they are not ready. He mentions how we start talking to humans even when they are inside the womb, and how children don’t start talking until after a couple of years. It would be ridiculous if we start talking to babies.. “By starting to confer the day we launch or worshops, we let our students know that they are in a different kind of classroom, one in which they will be required to talk with us about their writing.”

He also mentions how important is for us as teachers to go talk to our students, and for us to move around the classroom to reach them, instead of the conventional classroom, in which students usually need to come up to their teacher. This not also helps the students you are conferring with, but it helps those that are around it to get more familiar and comfortable with the conferring process. I catch myself sometimes asking students to come to my chair, but I will make an effort to reach my students instead of telling them to come over. 

When students listen to others' conferences, Anderson suggests to let the eavesdropping happen, what they learn through listening to others’ conferences is worth the time lost in writing.  It is good to encourage kids sitting around to pay attention to the conference, they might need to  learn something similar to what I am discussing. You can do this especially when you are about to start conferring, and most of your students are unsure about what conferences look like. He also suggests that sometimes, it is adequate to start the whole class and ask them to pay attention to that first conference, so that you can talk about it with everyone after that.

This way you can be sure that the students know what to expect when you are conferring with them, instead of feeling judged or critiqued. They will know that first you are asking them what are they doing, and then you will also teach them something so that they can become better writers. - (this pretty much sums up what conferring is all about)

Students pick up the new words that we use in conference because they are completely necessary for the new communication that will be happening in the classroom. “the average child already knows  ten thousand words at age four. By the time she finished school, her vocabulary grows to at least fifty thousand words, just by hearing words used naturally and in context, and from reading them”

It is good that we highlight every time our students are talking like writers, either by just saying it or by putting examples on a bulletin board of how students are beginning to act like writers.  It is extremely important to show students how we value their use of writing discourse, and this will make it more likely they will use this discourse when we confer with them.

A mini lesson that will help students understand their conference role would be the best way to go to help us make that big shift from talking what the stories were about to what they were doing as writers. 

“our conferences are time for me to come around and help you individually. We may be working on stuff as a class, but each of us is different and has different needs as writers, so our conference time is time for us to work together to give you more tools as a writer” Simply beautifully said. I need to keep this in mind so that I can explain to my students what the real purpose of a conference is. 

Another ways of teaching about conferences: 

Fishbowl- You confer with a child while the rest of the class observes and takes notes about what they notice the teacher and students are doing in the conference.

It is important that we don’t diverge into content, but stay focus on writing work.  The most helpful question to always get back on track is: “Can you tell me what you are doing as a writer today?” It will be normal for my students to answer this question by once again talking about what they are going to write about, but they need to have been exposed to different examples of how to express about their writing. This Is why is so important to confer in front of other children, so that they get a better idea of how to think and talk as writers. 

It is important to stop the conference when necessary, but equally as important to re-start the conference to give a chance to the students to revise their responses. This is really important for me to keep in mind, since I have caught myself sending students back to work on their writing when I see something is not correct, instead of questioning them, so that they can think about what they are doing, and give them another opportunity to verbally express their thoughts.

My only lingering question is if it is more important to give the students the vocabulary to talk during conferences and to talk as writers, or to help them develop better pieces of writing with better content. Or does becoming aware of how to revise your work as a writer leads you to writer better pieces that have good content? 

- I had this on a word document, and had completely forgotten about posting on the blog. shame on me :(