Responding to writing & writer’s conference

Responding to Writing & Writer’s Conference

Name of Group Members: Kavita Jaggessar, Theodosia Juliana Marshall, Tricia Bruce & Dillon Dindial

WHAT IS THE WRITING CONFERENCE

• Writing conferences are very essential to the development of students’ writing abilities. “A writing conference is a meeting to discuss student work.” The writing conference is really holding conversations with student writers about what they have written.

The Purposes:

• To celebrate – Begin with something the child has done well! Before, during or after the writing, respond to the writer. When responding remember to listen to what the writer has to say.

• To Validate – Affirming what the writer has done well.

The Purposes:

• To encourage – Reinforcing the writer’s strengths and attempts.

• To nudge (guide) - helping the writer say, write, and do what he or she can’t quite do yet without help.

• To teach – Teaching what’s most important for the writer to move forward and only what the writer is ready for.

The Purposes:

• To assess - Evaluate or estimate the nature, quality, ability, extent, or significance of confusions, strengths, and the next steps.

• Conferences provide instructors and students an opportunity to develop the kinds of relationships that promote good writing. First, conferences assist the instructor in seeing the student as a "whole person," providing a space in which the instructor might find out what sorts of tangential issues might be interfering with a student's work. Conferences also help students to see their instructors as "real people" who have a genuine interest in their education and their ideas. When students are comfortable talking to their instructors, they are more able to take criticism constructively and to entrust themselves to an often frightening learning process. (Dartmouth Writing Program (July 2005).

Forms of Writing Conferences

• Formal – Usually One-on-One private conferences.

• Informal – Usually Whole- class share conferences and are conducted publicly.

• Quick share Conference• Peer Conference• Roving (on-the-run conference)

Typesof

Writing Conferences

TYPES OF CONFERENCES

1. ONE-ON-ONE FROMAL CONFERENCES• ‘A one-on-one conference is exactly the same

as a whole-class share, only now you are sitting right next to the child, giving her your full attention, without the class deliberately listening in. All the praising and teaching is now done privately, and it’s good idea to take anecdotal notes for future reference’ (Routman, 2005).


Benefits of the One-on-One Conference• It will allow the teacher to deal with specific

concerns in dept with your students.• Students will be able to come on their own

free will to receive answers to question they may have.

• this will also enable who and student to have talks about their grades at the point in time.


Benefits of the One-on-One Conference• this will also enable who and student to have

talks about their grades at the point in time.• receive counsel on their behaviours and

tardiness during class time.


2. ROVING (on-the-run conference) • This type of conference is done in a quick manner. Normally it takes

about 2-3 minutes to be completed. While student is given a writing exercise, the teacher quickly makes his/her way through the classroom. The teacher takes notes on a rubric sheet which lists the name of student, items discussed, notes during conference, improvements needed, goals the student should reach and what the student did well. The teacher can also take anecdotal notes. These can be done in tabular from on a sheet containing names of students along with the notes. During the roving conference the teacher can use the opportunity to notice students who have problems in beginning to write, affirm student’s efforts, encourage students to continue writing, rereading, check spelling, teach on spot, asses, and offer guidance. This conference can lead you straight to one-on-one conference.


3. PEER CONFERENCES• After conducting writing the teacher pairs the class into

groups of two; then assigning each pair of students, to a working station in the classroom. Teachers need to be careful about pairing students who can not work together. Each student will take turns reading, asking questions and providing feedback to each others writing. The student will also be given a sheet of paper to record what they like most about their peers writing, ideas they think the writer can use, their questions and additional comments. For this conference students will use their experience they have learnt from doing whole-class share and one-on-one conferences.


4. QUICK SHARES• ‘A quick share is a mini conference that takes a

minute or less and celebrates a memorable line, an engaging lead or paragraph, rereading before continuing to write, taking a risk, or attempting something new (conversation, humour, writing a second lead)’ (Routman, 2005).


4. QUICK SHARES (cont’d)• The type of share is used when the teacher

has run out of time. During a time period of 2-3 minutes the teacher can go behind student which wrote a line or two in their writing which was memorable, giving celebration to these students. The teacher can also with students permission read these lines to the class, giving praises to the writer.


5. WHOLE-CLASS SHARE• This is where the students are given an

opportunity to write on a topic of their choice. After writing they would read what they have written to the entire class while the class and teacher listens.

The Process of conducting a Whole-Class share

1. A short lesson about 10- 15 minutes explaining the writing process.


2. Allowed to do individual writing on a topic of their choice for 20 minutes.


3. Whole-class sharing time.

Teach Students to do

more Editing

Teach Students to do more Editing

1. First priority is to get students to love writing.


2. Ways to demonstrate editing:-• Example :Good morning!Today is Friday, September 4th.

Please print your name. Count the number of letters in your name. Write that number next to your name.

_(Teacher's name)_


• Shared writing ExampleGodzilla "This is Bob Lane reporting for ITN with an important

announcement. Over the past 24 hours, an enormous lizard has been attacking New York. The lizard, who has been named Godzilla finished its rampage at around 7 pm last night. It has now begun swimming across the Atlantic Ocean and it is heading for Great Britain. The Prime Minister will be making a statement at around 5 o'clock this evening.


He is expected to advise everyone to gather together their belongings and leave the country as soon as possible. The army has been alerted and they are prepared to implement a full attack on the creature"

Meanwhile, Godzilla arrives at the Western coast of Ireland...


• Think aloud Example Your think-aloud might go something like this: "Hmmmmmm. So, let me start by estimating the

number of students in the building. Let's see. There are 5 grades; first grade, second grade, third grade, fourth grade, fifth grade, plus kindergarten. So, that makes 6 grades because 5 plus 1 equals 6. And there are 2 classes at each grade level, right? So, that makes 12 classes in all because 6 times 2 is 12. Okay, now I have to figure out how many students in all. Well, how many in this class? [Counts.] Fifteen, right?


Okay, I'm going to assume that 15 is average. So, if there are 12 classes with 15 students in each class, that makes, let's see, if it were 10 classes it would be 150 because 10 times 15 is 150. Then 2 more classes would be 2 times 15, and 2 times 15 is 30, so I add 30 to 150 and get 180. So, there are about 180 students in the school. I also have to add 12 to 180 because the school has 12 teachers, and teachers use pencils, too. So that is 192 people with pencils."

Continue in this way.


When reading aloud, you can stop from time to time and orally complete sentences like these:

• So far, I've learned...• This made me think of...• That didn't make sense.• I think ___ will happen next.• I reread that part because...• I was confused by...


• I think the most important part was...• That is interesting because...• I wonder why...• I just thought of...


1. Children of all ages need repeated demonstrations of the editing thought process and how and why changes are made before they can take on the task at hand.

2. When students know how to edit – Peer editing works well for improving the

mechanics and overall fluency of the writing.


• Before having and editing conference or having them participate in a peer editing conference , they are expected to have:

– Completed every editing expectation on the list we

wrote together– Reread their piece several times to check that they

have done so. – Fixed up most of their misspellings.


• Best advice on having and efficient editing conferences is to be relentless in refusing to for students what they can do for themselves.

THE END

Responding to writing & writer’s conference

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