Joanne Hindley Salch and Marianne Marino

This piece was incredibly interesting and focused on the conferencing portion of writer’s workshop. Teachers discussed how they often feel like this is the most difficult part of writer’s workshop because there is not script guiding you towards making you students better writers, it’s all on the teacher. Often time’s teachers feel as if they have to correct every mistake in their students writing. Other times they feel as if they have to reprimand students for not working as efficiently as they could be. But, the main focus of this article is to teach us how to conference and what types of things we can say or do to help guide our students. Guiding our students is the main concept of the writer’s workshop student teacher conference. Teachers are viewing their students as writers and are guiding them to use their suggestions. One method that was brought up was to recap the student’s story and ask them if that is what they wanted the reader to get out of it. This way, students are acknowledging that they may have left something out and the teacher is not pointing it out directly but leading them towards self-discovery and independence.

We do use writer’s workshop in my classroom but we have not implemented the program yet. I am so glad that I read this article before jumping into writer’s workshop because now I know where my conferences should go. I am incredibly quick to correct all of my student’s errors and realized how frustrating this can be for students. I especially hated this when I was writing and carried this feeling even through college. After reading this piece I now know that I am that teacher but I understand what conferences should look like and how to engage students in their writing as opposed to make them dislike the process.

This form of writing instruction I believe one of the most important. If teachers communicate with their students one on one they can not only understand student’s strengths and weaknesses, but also show them that they care about them as writers and people. We can learn about our students through writing and conferences open this door.

As for what I need to learn about this topic I feel like I need to learn a lot but mainly I need to practice. I realize that I will not be great at conferencing initially but with practice I will become better. I plan on not only reflecting on my students work but my ability to conference with them as well. I feel like this is crucial to my development. Overall, I am excited to try some of these methods with my own students when writer’s workshop begins.

Lastly, when it comes to assessment I feel as if teachers are constantly assessing student’s knowledge throughout the day but it is always more beneficial to write down notes or use an assessment scale. Because we haven’t started writer’s workshop yet I may want to have the students do a self-evaluation based on their feelings about reading and writing. This will be crucial for me to understand where my students stand on these topics. I could also use more writing samples to further assess the different levels and needs my students have.