Types of Conferences

1. Status of the class – a quick circuit of the whole class at the start of a writing workshop, during which each writer says in a few words what s/he will be working on that day. Each student makes a public commitment to some specific work, while also letting others know what they’re doing so they can help, share, etc. See Atwell’s In the Middle for details. 2. Topic search conference—helping a student find and list topics for writing, to be jotted in the front of his/her folder or worked on immediately. Some teachers bring along another student or two for more good ideas. Variant: the ‘human recorder’ conference, where the teacher writes down the student’s ideas for him/her. 3. Self-conference—kids can learn to do their own auto-conference before bring the work to other readers. This involves shifting gears inside one’s self, changing from being (in Peter Elbow’s conception) an easygoing drafter to being a hard-nosed editor. 4. Process conference—there are many great conferences, but his is the basic one, the classic with thanks to Don Graves. This conference allows teachers to conduct quick but helpful conversations with students without reading the paper, without preparation, without ‘teaching’ skills, and without offering any advice. Regular conferences of this type are associated with significant growth in student writing. The question sequence is simple: 1. What are you working on? 2. How is it coming? 3. What are you planning to do next?

Other than these three questions, or your own variation, the teacher doesn’t need to say anything else except “uh-huh” as the student talks to him/herself—which is the point. 5. Sharing or read-aloud conference—the student reads all or part of the writing piece aloud to the teacher for reaction and comments. Pausing to notice and make changes is encouraged. Variation: the teacher reads all or part of a piece back to the student, pausing for the student to make notes or changes. 6. Summarizing conference—in a way, this is the opposite of a sharing conference. Here, as Atwell has described, the teacher’s aim is to get students unwedded from their words by insisting that they tell about, summarize, or paraphrase their piece, instead of reading aloud. This is especially helpful for students who can’t see any need to revise when they simply share. 7. Content conference—a conversation officially restricted to discussing and developing the ideas, meaning or content of a piece. Post-it notes, stuck by the teacher, can help writers remember things to add or change later, back at their desk. 8. Problem conference—when student bring one or more specific concerns or problems to the conference for work. 9. Editing conference—a time to work specifically on mechanics, grammar, punctuation, spelling and other conventions. 10. Skills conference—a mini-lesson for a single student; teaching a writing skill at the moment when a student is trying to use it and is ready to add this skill to his/her repertoire. The true ‘teachable moment.’ 11. Publication conference—teacher and student work on the final steps of preparing a selected piece to be brought to a wider audience. This may mean planning a book layout, designing a cover, reviewing final text for a letter or hall display. 12. Evaluation conference—sitting down to review the student’s writing portfolio for a week, month, or marking period. The student usually has selected his/her best pieces for evaluation, talks about own strengths and weaknesses, plans for future growth, etc. 13. Fishbowl conference—when the teacher confers with one student in the middle of room, as a group or the whole class watches. Often used early in the year to show students what conferences are and how they work, or to train them for conferring with one another. A great modeling opportunity.

H.Budden