Three Actionable Steps to Incorporate Writing Conferences with Students
Are you ready to talk to your students about writing? Writing conferences 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 the 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! Check out my free Writing Conference Guide.
Write Every Day
WRITE, WRITE, AND WRITE! It is so important to find time daily or weekly to have students write.
If we talk about writing, we must have the writing to discuss. Find some of that precious class time to write. Conferencing with students about writing means that we believe writing is critical and we should find some time to write. Spending time doing it puts importance on it.
If you can't find time during class to write, it is always something that you can encourage students 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 and that finding the time to write out in the wild may not be possible.
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 make conferences a success.
Data is Our Friend
Engagement Tracker
Track your students for easy decision-making when planning writing conferences with students. This is not as creepy as it sounds. While they are writing, I get out my engagement tracker. It is a very simple chart with my students' names and some simple codes for tracking behaviors while we write as a class.
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 will be reluctant to engage, and I want to seek them out as soon as I can. So tracking their engagement is important. You can snag your copy of my engagement tracker at annotatedela.com/free.
Skills Tracker
Next, track students’ strengths and growth opportunities. I use a Google sheet with tabs along the bottom for each class, and within those tabs in each class, I have a roster of the students. I use our school’s writing rubric for that first writing prompt of the school year.
The Google Sheet has 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. The sheet has a space to make notes about the skill. So if a student needs to work on organization; there is space to note what specifically about their organization.
This tracker is invaluable for when I start to conference with students or pull small group throughout the year.
Writing Conferences with Students Tracker
A final way that I track for writing conferences with students is when we start meeting. I like to track who I meet with and what the topic is for the conference.
I find this especially helpful with small groups; I like to know the topic or lesson we covered with those students to remember what we covered.
This tracker for writing conferences with students is very simple on paper with quick notes, but it allows me to make sure that I am getting to meet with all my students. You can check out my Writing Conferences Mini Kit to get access to my trackers.
Have a Conversation
Finally, call a conference! Or sit down next to one of your students and talk about their writing.
It is really that simple. I prefer to conduct writing conferences with students when we are in a writing unit. It provides more time to conduct individual or small group conferences; if we're in a writing unit, we spend most of our class time writing.
However, if you find even five minutes to write daily or weekly, try talking to one or two students. Sit next to their desk or kneel and ask them how their writing is going. This begins to set that routine that not only do we write, but that we talk about our writing.
I hope you have found one step you can take and implement this week, this month, or even next year. Here’s to successful writing conferences with students!
More on Writing Conferences with Students
6 Surprising Benefits of Conferencing with Students in the Classroom