Three Actionable Steps to Incorporate Writing Conferences with Students
Are you ready to talk to your students about writing? Conferencing with students is a powerful practice that can feel overwhelming and stop us in our tracks. But, it does not have to be a big production.
Conferencing with students can be implemented in 3 actionable steps because baby steps are the key to success! Don’t let overwhelm or fear of starting, stop you from conferencing with your students. The practice of talking about writing as writers will transform your student’s writing and your classroom!
Action 1: Find time for students to write
Action 2: Track! Data is our friend
Action 3: Have a conversation with a student about their writing
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Melissa Burch 0:00
Hey, welcome back to another episode of annotated ELA. Today, we are diving into three actionable steps that you can take to start conferencing with your students. I am so excited today and so glad you're here. It's going to be a fairly quick episode. I'm hoping that these action steps are easy for you to implement and that they get you excited to continue conferring with your students or to start something new in the classroom. All right, so let's jump on in.
Melissa Burch 0:36
The first action step is to write, write, write. I know I have said this in every episode so far, that it is so important to find time daily or weekly to have students write, it's so important, I can't emphasize that enough. If we are going to talk about writing, we have to have the writing to talk about. Find some of that precious class time to write. We have our students silent read, or at least we want to, it is important, it is part of teaching language arts, the reading and the writing. Spending time doing it puts importance on it. I have had all the principals under the sun, who would agree or disagree with me giving my students 10 to 15 minutes at the end of class to read. But I also give them five or 10 minutes at the beginning of class to write, because it's what we do in ELA. And I will defend that until the end. So my hope is, that you can find those five minutes to write. If you can't, it is always something that you can encourage them to do at home. And I know, that can be very difficult because we have so many students with so many different backgrounds and lives that they are living, that finding the time to write out in the wild may not be possible. Just find what works for you and your students and give them whatever time you can to write, because that writing piece is what we need to be able to talk about our writing and for us to learn who we are as writers. So step one is find that time to write, write, write, and write with your students show them that it's important and that you engage in it as well.
Melissa Burch 2:19
This leads to action step number two track, track your students. This is not as creepy as it sounds. While they are writing, I get out my engagement tracker, you can grab this free tracker at annotated ela.com/free; I'll link it in the show notes. But it is a very simple chart with my student's names on it, I put it on paper and I stick it in my writing notebook so that they think I'm still writing with them. I will mark down who is immediately engaged in the writing, who's sharpening pencils, who is fiddling with their notebook, or looking around, or even taking a classroom field trip. This is valuable knowledge, because one of the first things I want to work on is their engagement with writing. My reluctant writers are going to be reluctant to engage and I want to seek them out as soon as I can. So tracking their engagement is one thing to track.
Melissa Burch 3:19
Next, tracking their strengths and their opportunities for growth. Generally, at the beginning of the year, my team gives just a baseline writing prompt, and we get a quick glance at their writing. It varies from year to year, we generally give them some sort of persuasive, or a response to literature writing prompt just to see where they're at with the writing. As a team and as a school, I have to track that data at the beginning, because then we will continue to track their writing progress throughout the year so that I can monitor what they need. There is a place for my school where we keep data, however, for my own personal use, I use a Google sheet. I have tabs along the bottom for each class and within those tabs in each class, I have a roster of the students. I use our rubric for that first writing prompt and I have a drop down menu within each sheet that lists organization, development of ideas, engagement, punctuation and grammar, word choice, whatever it may be. And when I'm looking at their writing, I will pick one of the most important skills or strategies that that student needs to work on. Depending on what grade I'm teaching, development of ideas and organization are generally some of our biggest focuses for the year until they get older. We hope that they've gotten that organization and development of ideas. So if I'm doing that in sixth grade, maybe even in seventh grade, I'm really focusing on that at the beginning of the year. And then I have a space where I can make a quick notes about that topic. So if it's organization what specifically about their organization, if it's about development of ideas, what specifically about their development of ideas, and again, we have a whole school rubric. So I just use elements from each of those to make my notes. This tracker is invaluable for when I start to conference with students or pull small group or work with any of them on their writing at any time throughout the year.
Melissa Burch 5:32
A final way that I track students is when we do start meeting for writing conferences. I like to track who I met with and what the topic was, especially for small group, I like to know the topic or the lesson that we covered with those students so that I don't forget. And those are very simple on paper quick notes, but it allows me to make sure that I am getting to meet with all my students, both of those trackers, the Google Sheet, and the simple individual and small group trackers are resources that I have, and I will link where you can get them in the show notes if you're interested.
Melissa Burch 6:07
Finally, action step number three is to just do it, call a conference or while your students are writing go sit down next to one of them and talk about their writing. How exciting! It is really that simple. I know that I really like to hit conferences intentionally when we're in a writing unit, because then all of my students are writing. And I can begin calling individual conferences or small group conferences with a bigger window of time, because if we're in a writing unit, we are spending the majority of our class time writing. So we're in a quote unquote, writers workshop. And it's easier to call students or sit down with students and talk about their writing. But it doesn't have to be that big of a production. If you are finding even those five minutes to write daily, or weekly, find five minutes. Try and talk to one or two students; just go sit next to their desk or kneel down next to them and ask them how their writing is going. Ask them if you can see what they're writing about. And even if they don't have a lot to say in those couple of minutes you're with them, you'll have a quick glance and something to add to your tracker or your mental notes on what that student is doing. And it begins to set that routine that not only do we write, but that we talk about our writing. So I think that's really important, and such a fun time to sit with them and get to know each other as writers and not just as teacher and student.
Melissa Burch 7:40
Alright, so that's it. Step number one is to find that time to write just write, write and more writing so that there is practice under their belts, and they begin to feel confident and excited about writing. Step number two is to track track track, I should say that I am not a data brain. That is not necessarily my strength, but boy do I love some good data. And it makes my planning so much simpler. So track how engaged they are, track their strengths and their opportunities for growth and track your students meeting times with you. And finally, call a conference or go sit down next to a student and talk about their writing. Just have a conversation about writing. I hope that you have found one step that you can take and implement this week, this month, or even next year. Let me know how it goes. If you are finding success with writing with your students, I would love to hear about it send me a DM over at annotatedela until next time friends, bye for now.
