Professional Reading Reflection - Chp 5

Chp 5 – Conferring with Writers

           This is a chapter that I was really looking forward to.  I had a lot of trouble conferencing during writing workshop this year and I got a lot of great ideas from the authors in this chapter.  I liked the suggestions that the authors had for conferencing: Listen, be present as a reader, understand the writer, follow the student’s energy, build on strengths and teach one thing.  It is nice to have some guidelines to follow because we did not have a writer’s workshop model when I went to school, so I have never really seen conferences before.

            I am certainly going to have conferences in my classroom next year, I am just concerned how to run them.  I know what to do with the child that I am conferencing with, what to say and how to help them, but how do I keep track of these meetings and what should I take notes on?  I suppose I could use the index card suggestion from the authors and jot down a few details that I notice from talking to the student.  It would be great if we could revisit what we talked about last time to see if there had been any improvements or changes.  I look forward to learning more about this.