Conferring with Writers: An Essential Part of Writing Instruction

Have you ever caught yourself thinking, How in the world am I supposed to conference with ALL my kids regularly? If not, you’re a ROCK STAR! And I certainly tip my hat to you.

If you’re like me, however, you’ve had this thought on an every day basis occasionally. You have a room full of kids and never enough time for anything.

Well, I’ve found a system that works really well for me, and you might just find that it’s easier than you think. #goals

First of all, we have to go back to that writing time issue. Kids MUST have time to write EVERY day…or dang near it. And the more they write across curriculum, the better writers they will become.

While we can’t control what happens in other classrooms, we can control what goes on in our own. Our students should be provided feedback in a timely manner in order to reflect on their mistakes and figure out a way to make their writing better.

Let’s take a 60 minute class and break it apart:

• 5-10 min warm up
• 10 minute mini lesson
• 35-40 minutes Writer’s Workshop
• 5 min share

Our focus today will be on the Writer’s Workshop piece because this is where I can get in lots of uninterrupted time with my students while they are in the process. If we are honoring our students’ writing time, they should get 35-40 minutes of writing almost every day. Occasionally you have to double up and teach a grammar lesson AND a craft lesson for writing, so you might take longer, but really 20 minutes at the very least!

During this sacred writing time, students are practicing both writing and grammar together. They’re writing! They are thinking about when to use capital letters and when to start a new paragraph. They are trying out new crafts and applying what they know about grammar to punctuate it correctly. They are manipulating sentences to see how they sound when the words are switched around. They are asking each other for suggestions of great vocabulary words or help with looking in the thesaurus. This is what real writing looks like in the classroom.

Real writing is how our kids learn both grammar and craft. They don’t learn by taking practice tests. They don’t learn with weekly memorized spelling lists. They learn by writing. Period.

But it is our responsibility as the teacher to help guide them along their journey. That’s where conferring comes in.

1. Hold your students accountable. If you keep a clipboard handy with you, you can place a form on it that has all your students’ names and a place to write notes. I have a FREE chart in my TpT store that you can use if you like it. There are two options: 20 students or 25 students. This is what I use with my students. It’s simple but effective.
2. Focus. Rather than picking the work apart, focus on a few things. A quick way to turn a student off to writing is to tell him that there are numerous things wrong with his paper. Instead, narrow in on one or two things the student should do to improve. This might include using commas when he is listing or remembering to capitalize I every time. Or it might be related to craft. He might need to focus on the clarity of his sentences or add an interesting introduction to capture his reader’s attention. We don’t have to separate writing and grammar. We can’t have one without the other, right?
3. Be timely. You don’t have to spend 15 minutes with one student. If you’re following Tip #2 and focusing in rather than correcting the whole thing, it’s easier to finish conferences faster. I try to limit my conferences to 5 minutes or less. Some students need just a quick check in, while others need a little more…and sometimes a lot more help. But on average, I’d say I spend about 5 minutes. This is enough time to talk about what is working and what isn’t.
4. Let the students do the talking. This is the hardest one for me. Rather than telling the students what improvements should be made to their writing, ask them what is working and where they feel they need to improve. The more we do this, the more our students are able to critique their own work and figure out where they can upgrade their papers and reflect on their successes. This builds better writers over all, and everything starts falling into place. When students don’t see their errors, use questioning to prompt them. Ask them to look back at a sentence or paragraph and find whatever they are missing or overusing or whatever the case is. Put the work back on them. Again, the more they practice this, the more self-sufficient they become.
5. Students, PUT YOUR HANDS DOWN! Who else looks up to see 15 hands in the air? Oh. My. Goodness. This drives me nuts! We MUST train our students to keep writing, even when they “need” us. Many students just need a word spelled correctly or want you to tell them their work is “good.” The reality is: When the hand goes in the air, the writing ceases. Students become bored. They begin to talk. Behavior problems ensue. It’s a disaster all around. Teach routines for what to do when students are stuck. This will save you lots of sanity! Some things my students can do are: free write, reread old journal entries and add to them in some way (correcting errors, revising a sentence, adding an alternate ending, continuing a story), highlight words in their essay they could improve and use a thesaurus, grab a prompt and begin a new essay, find a book and look for examples of our grammar rules, or write down example sentences that follow grammar rules and post them next to our focus phrase (from Patterns of Power by Jeff Anderson), and sometimes they can practice with task cards or games once those expectations have been taught.
6. Go to your students. Don’t ask your students to come to you. And don’t allow your students to form a line. The same principle applies from Tip #5 about behavior issues and boredom. Plus…let’s face it: If they’re standing in line…they aren’t writing. But they should be because this is our sacred writing time. During this time, we write. We don’t stand in lines. A healthy side effect of this is lower anxiety, so you win on this one, too. #trustme
7. Stay positive. It is easy to get bogged down with conferences when you see that students are having a hard time, but it is crucial to stay positive. Your students are feeding off of your energy. Make sure it’s energy you want to have fill your room!

So…what do you think? Doable? It totally is. Will it take you a little bit to get into a smooth routine? You betcha! Anything new does, right? I beg you to give it a chance.

I know there are people out there who tell you to spend lots of time on grammar instruction and only 25% of your time on writing because that’s how the test is divided up. But this philosophy is so backwards! Students need time to write. Combine that with some mad conferencing skills that YOU possess, and you’ve got yourself some solid learning going on. And you’ll see their grammar skills improve right along with it. It’s a win-win!!

Is this something you do in your classroom daily? If so, what do you do that works well? Is there something I left out? We would all love to hear from you! Please share in the comments!

Until next time…