NCTE Inbox - Writing Conferences

A Look at Conferencing 
For more ideas on conferencing in online environments, take a look at Preparing Educators for Online Writing Instruction: Principles and Processes. Beth Hewett and Christa Ehmann show how instructors can engage students in productive conversations about their writing with or without face-to-face contact. See also "Online Writing Instruction: No Longer a Novelty" from NCTE's Council Chronicle.

The following resources from NCTE and ReadWriteThink.org provide more tips and strategies for conferencing with students.

The Council Chronicle article “Formative Assessment: Helping Students Grow” (G) shares how teachers can measure how well their students are learning by implementing and responding to class discussions, quick writes, reader response journals, quizzes, and writing conferences.

"Conferring in the Writing Workshop" (E), a themed issue of School Talk, highlights advice from four experienced teachers of writing -- Ralph Fletcher, Carl Anderson, Joanne Hindley Salch, and Marianne Marino. They share responses that can be given to student writers in the classroom which have been found to enable students to stretch their ability as writers.

Two teachers reflect on their combined experiences in teaching middle school, teaching preservice teachers, and teaching online in order to adapt and apply strategies for bringing positive experiences in a computer-based environment to middle grade students in the Voices from the Middle article, “Lessons Learned from Integrating Technology in a Writer’s Workshop” (M). The result is five valuable lessons, each of which is explained theoretically and described practically through a writers’ workshop example, where teachers conference with their students.

The approach to conferencing and feedback outlined in the Classroom Notes Plus article “Reworking Conferencing for More Effective Writing Feedback” (S) draws upon some basic structures that exist in most writing workshop classrooms at both high school and college levels. But a few important adaptations improve the effectiveness of teacher feedback and student uptake of that feedback.

Teaching students how to talk about their writing and responses to other students’ writing may be key in improving their writing skills. In “Thank You for Sharing: Developing Students’ Social Skills to Improve Peer Writing Conferences” (S) from English Journal, the author suggests several activities that can help. The examples here show how students can conference with each other.