one-to-one conferences

Becoming an effective reading coachGrades 3 through 514.11.12

One-to-one Conferences

MinilessonTeaching PointActive InvolvementLink

Conferences and Small Groups

Sharing

Overview of Reading Workshop Schedule

1. One thing that is really working for you

2. One thing that you would like to get better at or know more about

3. One way that I can support you

Share your experience with Reading Workshop so far

ExpressionVisualizationUnderliningNoticing what we

are readingDecodingSummarizingImaginationRereadingMaking

predictionsMaking

connectionsDreamRelaxingKeeping track of

eventsUnderstanding

secondary characters

Empathizing with charcters

Expanding knowledge

TravelingSynthesisingImproving

spellingVocab.Deciding which

book to readEnvisioningFluencyUsing picture

cues

Brainstorm some skills you use when you read

What is your goal as a reading teacher?We need to spend a fair percentage of our

time face to face with kids’ own reading.If we care about their independent reading,

they will care about it.Conferences are our chance to ask, “How’s it

going?”Our goal today is to feel less empty-handed

when they say “Fine.”

Thoughts on Conferences

Remember, when we confer, we are not simply helping the readers implement the minilesson.

Conferences are opportunities for new teaching that relate more to the child’s ongoing direction as a reader.

Conferences are differentiated, specific, and efficient teaching

There will be a million possible teaching points.

Thoughts on Conferences

1. Reading notes from previous conferences 2. What we know about the genre the student is reading

1. (ex. Who is the main character? What does this character seem to really, really want? Why? What might stand in the character’s way of getting this? Take me to that part.)

3. Thinking about the band of text difficulty4. Reading Logs as evidence of the student’s readerly life5. Post-its—Thinking about reading (avoid knee-jerk deficit

thinking and make a big fuss about what the student is already doing)

6. Learning Pathways —advancing skills (What is the skill the student is using and how can this child advance farther along the pathway of that skill? Ex. What might it mean to make a personal connection in a more advanced way?)

7. Conversations with partners about reading

Resources for Conference Teaching Points

Research (How’s it going?)Decide and ComplimentTeach

Architecture of a Conference

Research

When someone researches you (a boss, a doctor, etc.)

How’s it going?Deep listening—leaning inRecord keeping

Research

Students need to understand their own role in a conferenceWhat are you working on as a reader?Stop students when they launch into a retell of the

whole story“When I ask, ‘What are you working on as a reader?’

I’m wanting to know what new stuff you are trying to do to get to be an even stronger reader.”

Naming what often operates below the conscious level If student is not able to do name the strategy or skill:

“Will you do that work right now as I watch,” and then “So to me it looks like you are the kind of reader who...”

Research

Readers benefit from teaching you about their reading work (“How did you?”)

Students articulate reading strategies and become teachers as they contribute to the feeling that the classroom is a community of learners

More likely that these conversations will carry on without you

Research

Decide

Conferences seem relaxed, but it is actually the most rigorous time in a teacher’s day

All of the components of lesson planning in a split second

Make a judgement with speed and accuracy What goal is the learner aiming toward? What does that goal look like in concrete terms? Where, on the pathway toward her goal, is she located?

Decide

“Instruction is powerful only when it is sufficiently precise and focused to build directly on what students already know and to take them to a new level. While a teacher does and must do many things, the most critical is designing and organizing instruction so that it is focused. Without focus, instruction is inefficient, and students spend too much time completing activities that are too easy and do not involve new learning or on tasks that are too difficult”

Breakthrough by Fullan et al., 2006, p.34

Decide

Temptations to avoid Listen just long enough to know the kind

of work that the reader is engaged with and then leap to an instant conclusion about what one will teach

First study and name what a reader is doing and then send the reader off to new territory, in a new direction (build off of the reader’s own intentions rather than redirecting)

Decide

Compliment

What is it that the reader has already done (or almost done) that I could compliment?

I can teach as much through finding and recognizing and celebrating good work as by issuing challenges.

Make the compliment transferable (Whenever you read a book remember to do this)

Make the compliment centered on new learning (or what the student has almost done) Ex. “I am blown away by your decision to mark the important

steps that your character made on her journey—the big things that happened, the places she visited. I know you did that so you can look back over the whole journey, sort of retelling in your mind and to others, and that is just so smart—to not just read forward but to stop from time to time to recall the path the book has taken so far.”

Make the compliment personal (Don’t simply say nice job on doing exactly what I told you to do. Find out new words or ways to capture what the student has done)

Compliment

“People work harder and grow faster when we are seen and our work is recognized.”

Launching the Writing Workshop p. 133

Compliment

Teach

This phase includes a teaching point, active involvement, and a link (and it happens really FAST!).

Try to avoid nudging questions to subtly get the students to do what we are asking of them.

This is a moment for a single, straightforward teaching point such as: “One thing I want to teach you is that it helps for a reader

to not only generate questions, like you are doing, but to also carry those questions with us as we read on. Then as we read, we come up with possible answers to those questions. We sort of think, ‘Could it be...?’ and then we read on to see if that tentative answer works.”

Note: This might be a teaching point for a student who is using the strategy of questioning, but simply writing down questions. This teaching point leads the student farther along on the pathway of this skill of questioning while reading.

Teach

After you teach you will tend to do a tiny demonstration. Carry with you the class read aloud or a short stack of books.

Name what you have done in the demonstration that you hope will be transferable to the students

“So try it...” and coachConclude conference with the idea of “Today

and from now on...”Record the conference and move to the next

child

Teach

Don’t be too hard on yourselfTry it out and take the time to ask

What went well?What didn’t go so well?What do you want to try to work on?How can you improve the intimacy, responsiveness,

and effectiveness of your conferring.Conferencing gets better with time and practiceEncourage students to show their thinking and

grow their ideas on post-itsRead last paragraph in conferencing chapter

Try It Out

Example Conferences