"Talk is essential to the healthy maintenence of any writing workshop..."

"I mean, we have no idea what children might say in response to, "Tell me about how your writing is going." "

This weeks reading from Katie Wood Ray's The Writing Workshop focused on conferencing, share time, and assessing.

Conferencing

Ever since I starting walking down the road to becoming a teaching I have been all about conferencing.I have never read about through the lens of writing workshop, but I love the idea of conferencing with students. Just to get to know my students and have them connect and realize their strengths, weaknesses, areas of improvement, etc. 

In regards to the writing workshop...First I really like how Katie made special mention that it is important that to sit with the the student at their desk, in their environment and not have the student come to the teacher's desk. Having student's come to the teacher's desk is the usual format that I see in classrooms when teacher's have any type of conference with student's. I have even been apprehensive about conferencing in the "mix of the students" because I felt as though it would disturb their precious working time. However, after reading this chapter I realize that the students would get used to the conference and once they got familiar with them, they probably wouldn't even notice, if I was conferencing with another student near them. I like that she said it lets student know "that we want to catch them in the act of doing their work."

I learned that conferencing is not about going around to students who have their hand raise because they need help. "The purpose is to teach." I like that Katie emphasis the important nature of independence in the writing workshop. That most problems student's face can be taken care of on their own. 

Katie did a good job of reassuring me about conferences when she shared her fear about, possibly not being able to meet with each student all the time because that would be my first fear. That I wasn't conferencing with the right student that needed it that day or that week. Her advice about teaching them independence and that even one conference is more than I ever had, was comforting.

There are parts that make up a conference: research, decide, teach, and make a record. I will share a few things I find insight about each. 

In research, where it is the students responsibility to talk and the teacher responsibility to see how things are going for the writers, I liked Katie's tips on how to get the "no-talker" to talk. My favorite was when a student says "I don't know" you can respond with "tell me what you don't know or what you are struggling with." I like this for because it lets students know what there is never a wrong answer and that even if you feel you don't have an answer there may be a reason for that.

In deciding what to pull from the writer's talk I had a realization that I don't know many formalities about writing, but that I shouldn't let my small fists of knowledge stop me from conferencing because I am involved in a learning process just as my students are.

I liked that in teaching, the teacher can teach something that a student already know because it is just reinforcing what the child is doing is smart.

Like Katie, I find it very vital to keep a record of conferencing that way you can track progress, improvements, plan for lessons, etc. It is such a great tool that has endless amounts of benefits.

Share Time

"A predictable time we plan to bring everyone together for just talk about writing"

This is such a great way to build classroom community. Where students are able to share their work with other students to support each other, to get feedback, and possibly to gain empathy toward each other in the classroom.

I like the idea of sharing in partners or small group (simple response share) because I agree with Katie that when you read something in it's entirety it is like publishing because you don't want to share that piece again because everyone has already heard it. 

Survey Share sounds neat! I think with this you could have student come up to the board and you could create a wordle to really see if there are any trends in the students responses.

Student-as-Teacher Share sounds really fun! This is a great way to sort of "spotlight" different writer's in the classroom. You could even use this as a good "teaching" opportunity for the students.

Assessing

I do believe that assessing and finding curriculum through questioning was a great chapter, but I am sort of burnt out on responding to this weeks reading so I am going to leave you with two quotes that I believe sum it up...

Asking students questions is a form of assessment "because they provide us with critical information about how writing is going for our students." 

But they also provide curriculum because "the questions themselves teach students important ways to think about their writing and about themselves as writers."

"Our questions show students very clearly what we value in their work as writers, and they model way in which we hope students will learn to talk among themselves as writers."
AMEN.