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Being a Model and Mentor: Nonfiction Small Group Instruction

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The Upper Elementary ideos are numbers three and four

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From A Teacher's Guide to Writing Conferences of The Classroom Essentials Series
Invite students to have a real give-and-take with you.

Even though in conferences you're a teacher talking to students, you're also a (more experienced) writer talking to (less experienced) fellow writers about what writers do-come up with topics, make a plan for a piece of writing, write a lead, develop a section
with detail, use commas in a series, and so on. In this give and take, you learn about what students are trying to do as writers and how well they're doing it, and the students learn how they can do their work better.

Speak in a conversational tone.

Tone is the foundation of the good relationships you want to develop with students over the course of the school year. Speaking in a warm, friendly manner puts students at ease and makes it more likely they will talk with you about what they're trying to do as writers. What you learn from this talk helps you assess students and decide what you should teach to help them grow.

Sit alongside students, at their eye level.

How you sit with students helps you establish a positive tone in conferences. You might grab a nearby empty seat or sit on one that you carry with you around the classroom. As you sit, it's important to make frequent eye contact with students and make sure that your
facial expressions show an interest in what students are telling you.

Use "active listening" strategies.

For example, give some wait time after asking a question so that students have the time and space they need to come up with a response. Ask students to "say more" about what they tell you. And repeat what children say to check that you're hearing them correctly.
Using these strategies shows that you have a real interest in what students are saying and that you're really trying to understand them. Students will usually respond by talking to you more.

The goal of a writing conference is to teach students something about writing that they can use in the future. If you add to students' writing repertoires in every conference, they become better writers over time.

***

Learn more about A Teacher's Guide to Writing Conferences at Heinemann.com

Carl Anderson is one of the nation's leading experts on teaching writing to students in grades K-12. He dedicates his energies exclusively as an education consultant and writer.

Carl recently worked for Teachers College Reading and Writing Project at Columbia University as a Lead Staff Developer, providing staff development in the teaching of writing grades K-8. He spent school days in New York City elementary and middle schools demonstrating effective teaching in the writing workshop and coaching teachers. He gave day-long workshops for teachers at Teachers College on launching the writing workshop, conferring with student writers, mini-lessons, and developing curriculum for the writing workshop.

Carl is the author of numerous books including the bestselling How's It Going? A Practical Guide to Conferring with Student Writers, as well as Assessing Writers and the series Strategic Writing Conferences: Smart Conversations that Move Young Writers Forward Grades 3-6.

His latest book, A Teacher's Guide to Writing Conferences, is part of the Classroom Essentials series. Full of classroom video, the book helps teachers understand the underlying principles and reasons for conferring with students, and how to make writing conferences a part of teachers' daily routines.

Follow Carl on Twitter @ConferringCarl

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From A Teacher's Guide to Writing Conferences of The Classroom Essentials Series Even though in conferences you're a teacher talking to students, you're also a (more experienced) writer talking to (less experienced) fellow writers about what writers do-come up with topics, make a plan for a piece of writing, write a lead, develop a sectionwith detail, use commas in a series, and so on.

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Choice Literacy - Articles & Videos - Full Article

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I began projecting clips for the whole group during our reflection circle and asked students to think and comment on where they observed readers working for greater engagement. Suddenly students were sharing their own reading victories and noticing the victories in others. Students were trying strategies I offered and integrating strategies they observed in peers.

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This is "MT2" by New Perspectives Online on Vimeo, the home for high quality videos and the people who love them.

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Some ideas from the Two Writing Teachers

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Conferring Toolkits: Record Keeping

Detailed records of small group and 1:1 conferences are one of the most important items in your conferring toolkit. Why? Keeping records:

Helps distribute your time equitably amongst students.

See the tracks of your teaching and monitor student growth.

Helps you determine next steps with each student, small groups, or the whole class.

Some people keep weekly status of the class forms while others keep detailed notes about every student. It doesn't matter how you choose to keep as long as you have a system that informs your instruction and is useful to you.

If you've never kept records inside of a conferring toolkit before, you have a choice to make before you get started. Will you keep notes on paper or will you use technology to type up your notes as you meet with students during independent writing time?

Here are my thoughts on handwritten and digital records:

Handwritten

When I had my classroom, I tinkered with my record-keeping forms regularly. I eventually settled on something like this:

It was sloppy. No one could read it. But no one had to since my notes were for my own use to monitor and track student progress. Once I left the classroom and began leading presentations on conferring with teachers, I updated them my forms so they'd look slicker. (Click here or here to see these forms.) While handwritten notes worked for me when I was in the classroom, I don't think I'd go back to them again since I have become comfortable with digital record-keeping in the past two years.

My iPad has become the place where I keep my conferring records when I work with kids in classrooms now. I've worked with students in five different places this school year. I'm not about to trust myself to bring the right notebook when I go to a given school. Therefore, I store everything digitally in Evernote, which makes pulling up a student's conferring notes fast since I have Evernote Premium. (Click here to view a guest blog post Cathy Mere wrote about using Evernote for conference notes.)

NOTE TO COACHES OR CONSULTANTS: Evernote is a fabulous place to store your conferring notes since it syncs with your smartphone and computer. It cuts down on the amount of paper you will need to carry from classroom-to-classroom or between schools.

I could use Evernote exclusively - using Cathy Mere's incredible system - but I found something that works better for me. I use KustomNote, in conjunction with Evernote, while I am in the midst of a conference. I find it helpful to have the structure of a KustomNote template (I have built separate templates for small group strategy lessons and 1:1 conferences.) to type in while I'm meeting with students. Because I'm in multiple places, having a template that prompts me to record the student's school and grade level helps me with the kind of record-keeping I do as I travel around to different classrooms.

Here's how KustomNote works with Evernote:

1. I type my notes directly into a KustomNote template, which goes to a pre-assigned notebook in Evernote. (I set up the Evernote notebook I wanted template entries to go to when I created each KustomNote template.)

2. Press "save note."

3. Go to Evernote and sync. The note appears in the pre-selected Evernote notebook.

4. From there I can tag notes, add photos of student work, and/or audio clips of a conference with a student.

Some folks might be unfamiliar with KustomNote. (I know about it thanks to Jodi Mahoney.) So, here are a couple things to help get you started if you're considering using KustomNote in conjunction with Evernote.

First, here's a look at the way a 1:1 conferring note appears on KustomNote and Evernote:

Second, if you'd like a 1:1 conference template to get you started with KustomNote, click here to view a public template I created.

* * * * *

I believe conferring notes are one of the most important things you can keep in your conferring toolkit. It doesn't matter if they're scrawled on paper or are typed on a tablet that resides in your conferring toolkit. All that matters is that the records you keep will help you to better understand your students as writers.

Take Our Poll

Let's chat on Monday, May 11th at 8:30 p.m. EDT, when the six of us host a Twitter Chat about conferring toolkits. Just search and tag #TWTBlog to participate.

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Detailed records of small group and 1:1 conferences are one of the most important items in your conferring toolkit. Why? Keeping records: Helps distribute your time equitably amongst students. See the tracks of your teaching and monitor student growth. Helps you determine next steps with each student, small groups, or the whole class.

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This is the year I'm going to keep better records.

I craved chocolate chip cookies, eight summers ago, when I was pregnant with my daughter. Despite needing compression stockings to quell the swelling in my legs, I had no qualms about standing in the kitchen to bake chocolate chip cookies from scratch. I was very pregnant and willing to try many recipes in the search of the perfect cookie. After tasting what I thought would be the best cookie yet, I was happy for a while, but after eating several cookies, I typically had a complaint. Some recipes were too crunchy while others were too greasy. Therefore, I'd try to figure out what to change (e.g., a different ratio of brown sugar to white sugar, softened butter instead of melted butter) and bake another batch.

Besides finding the perfect chocolate chip cookie recipe, there are a handful of things I've become obsessively passionate about getting right. One of the other things I've tried to perfect are my conferring records. In fact, I've obsessed over record-keeping forms even more than chocolate chip cookie recipes. When it came to record-keeping forms, everything I tried worked for a while for the purpose of organization and documentation, but the information wasn't truly driving my instruction.
Why does record-keeping matter?
Record-keeping can seem challenging. But, like anything else, it's important to think about why we keep records. Record-keeping helps you distribute your time equitably amongst your students. It allows you to see the tracks of your teaching. Record-keeping helps you monitor student growth. It also helps with goal-setting. Finally, keeping records of conferences and strategy lessons allows you to determine the next steps with each student, small groups, or the whole class.

Regardless of what kind of record-keeping form you use, it's helpful to jot down notes in the moment, rather than waiting until the end of the school day. I suggest teachers take notes when their students are actively involved in trying out the strategy you taught them or in-between writing conferences. Writing notes when you're in the moment allows your record-keeping to be accurate and detailed.

Now that we've established that record keeping matters, I want to share my record-keeping journey with you (complete with a variety of forms you can download at the end of this post).
Class-at-a-Glance Grids
I started obsessing over my conferring record keeping sheets when I was a fifth-grade teacher in Manhattan. I tried using a class conferring manifest , which is a single sheet of paper that has all of the students' names, dates you conferred with them, and the teaching point you delivered on one sheet of paper. Thing is, I taught 26 - 32 fifth graders so I couldn't fit all of my students on one sheet of 8.5" x 11" paper! Therefore, I had to keep two sheets of paper on my clipboard, which meant I couldn't glance at the manifest quickly. In addition, the manifest didn't feel detailed enough for me since I couldn't keep track of the compliments I gave to my students when I met with them.
Three-Column Notes
Next, I created sections for each student in a spiral notebook that allowed me to or the track my observations and teaching points compliments and teaching points I delivered every time I met with a student. I used stick-on tabs to separate each child's section, which was four back-and-front pages, from the next. I used a sheets like these on and off for a few years. What I didn't know then, that I understand now, is that these pages were too sparse for me.
Carbonless Notebooks
I went through a period where I used this same three-column system, but housed it in a carbonless notebook so my students could have a "carbon copy" of my conferring notes. (They housed their carbonless copy in their writing folder.) Eventually, this system became cumbersome since there were always a handful of students who misplaced their carbonless copy. Once I learned about the idea of leaving behind a tangible artifact for students at the end of a writing conference, my carbonless notebook became obsolete. Another idea, which I learned about recently from Melanie Meehan, are conference cards , which can be a useful tool for a teacher as s/he has a conference and for the student to recall what s/he discussed in the writing conference after the teacher has departed.
Forms for Three-Ring Binders
After studying with Lucy Calkins and Carl Anderson in the summer of 2008, I realized my conference record keeping forms needed a massive reboot. I bounced around a lot that year, going back and forth between my old three-column chart and using a three-ring binder to house a variety of record-keeping sheets in every student's section that captured more information (e.g., , next steps mentor texts) .

I took a week-long course in at the 2011 TCRWP Summer Writing Institute. After studying with Carl, I realized conferring record-keeping sheets should have a space for students' writing goals so they can be kept top-of-mind. Therefore, I updated one of my three-ring binder forms so it had space for each student's name, his/her writing goals, and then ample space to record a compliment, teaching point, and future teaching plans. Finally, after seven years of tinkering with record-keeping forms, I Assessment-Based Writing Instruction with Carl Anderson finally felt like I got a record-keeping sheet right .
Digital Records
In early 2013, my PLN was a buzz about Evernote. (I purchased a premium subscription that same summer and have allowed Evernote to transform my life by digitizing all of the paper that used to surround me.) Cathy Mere shared her expertise for using Evernote to keep digital conferring records in a December 2013 guest blog post here on TWT . Once I read her post, I decided digital conferring notes would be a smarter way to go for me since I see kids in different schools due to the nature of my life as a literacy consultant. Having paper records just doesn't make sense for me at this point in my career.

Initially, I created templates for 1:1 conferences and strategy lessons on . However, when Kustomnote was bought out by , I started keeping more simplified notes in Evernote. This was ineffective since I often forgot to write down key information. Eventually, I came across an Evernote . Therefore, once I created Kustomnote Transpose how-to about creating templates conferring and strategy lesson templates, all I have to do when I want to use a template from my template library notebook, is to right-click and choose "copy to notebook" from the pop-up menu. Then, I select the notebook I want to copy a template into and I'm ready to keep my records.

What's great about Evernote (BTW: I don't work for Evernote. Simply put, I love their product!) is that you can take photos of student work to embed in each student's note file. Also, you can record audio clips of your conferences or strategy lessons and place them in your notes. Not only will this help you hold onto what students are working on, but your digital conferring notes can make parent-teacher conferences come alive since parents will get to see and hear their students in action.

Why did I take you on this journey? I could've written this post and included links to a variety of record-keeping forms (You'll find links to all of the above-mentioned forms below!) with the hope one of them would transform your record-keeping this year. However, I wanted you to realize that even if this is the year you're going to keep better conference records, then you must understand that you, too, will go on a journey to find a record-keeping system that works for you. Don't let anyone tell you what form to use! You must find a system that works for you even when it feels messy and giving up (and not keeping records) seems like the better option. Therefore, pick something and try it out for a week. Reflect. Refine your record-keeping tool or start anew. You'll know you have a record-keeping system that's working when you regularly examine your notes in order to plan for future conferences, strategy lessons, and mini-lessons. Don't be afraid to tweak your record-keeping system until you find one that feels as right as the perfect chocolate chip cookie tastes.
Let this be the year you're going to keep better conferring records!
Ready to get started? Here are some action steps to take depending on how much (or how little) you've kept records in the past.

Links to Record Keeping Forms:

Bonus Links to My Favorite Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipes:

This giveaway is for a copy of . Thanks to Kids 1st from Day 1: A Teacher's Guide to Today's Classroom Heinemann for donating a copy for one reader. (You must have a U.S. mailing address to win a copy of this book.)

For a chance to win this copy of Kids 1st from Day 1: A Teacher's Guide to Today's Classroom, please leave a comment about this or any blog post in this blog series by Sunday, August 12th at 6:00 p.m. EDT. Melanie Meehan will use a random number generator to pick the winner's commenter number. His/her name will be announced in the ICYMI blog post for this series on Monday, August 13th.

Please leave a valid e-mail address when you post your comment so Melanie can contact you to obtain your mailing address if you win. From there, our contact at Heinemann will ship the book to you. (NOTE: Your e-mail address will not be published online if you leave it in the e-mail field only.)

If you are the winner of the book, Melanie will email you with the subject line of TWO WRITING TEACHERS - KIDS 1ST. Please respond to her e-mail with your mailing address within five days of receipt. A new winner will be chosen if a response isn't received within five days of the giveaway announcement.

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This is the year I'm going to keep better records.

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Want to keep (better) conferring records, but don't know where to begin? This post will help you discover analog and digital record-keeping systems. Read all the way through since there will are lots of downloadable templates to help you get started.

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Google Folder of Conferring Notes Examples

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Google Folder of Conferring Notes Examples

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Create a new document and edit with others at the same time -- from your computer, phone or tablet. Get stuff done with or without an internet connection. Use Docs to edit Word files. Free from Google.