Chapter 9: Conference with Students

Conferences about a student's writing can be powerful.  Like others, I thought that conferencing with students meant one-on-one conferences.  However, as Routeman explains, there are several different kinds of conferences:

http://www.sccsc.edu/wow

Whole class shares
Quick shares
Roving, on-the-run conferences
One-on-one conferences
Peer conferences

No matter the type of conference layer on the praise. Be selective of your wording when pointing out mistakes or corrections.  Depending on how you approach these can build up or squash a student.  I have been able to put these ideas into practice while helping with 2nd grade writing time.  I talked with the teacher afterwords to get her thoughts and was pleased to hear positive comments.  Unfortunately, before I could get it right, there had to be some 'guinea pig' children that did not get this same treatment.  I still have a lot to learn.  Routeman's teacher talk sentence starters to use during conferences are really going to be a big help to me!