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Too often we find ourselves in the midst of workshop without the right tool! Hasn’t this happened to you? Trying to be proactive can help your conferring not only become more efficient but… Continue reading →

Whether it's storytelling, or shared writing, or interactive writing, any piece of writing that your whole class created together is going to be extremely helpful to have at your fingertips while you are moving about the classroom conferring.

A peek into a coaching cycle centered on writing conferences with first graders.

Have plans mid-June? Cancel them and prepare to run to your nearest bookstore. The Reading Strategies Book by Jen Serravallo is a must and is intended for grades K-8!

A guide to crafting your own teaching points for 1:1 conferences, strategy lessons, minilessons, mid-workshop interruptions, and share sessions.

Last week, I had a little brainstorming session with one of my favorite groups of teachers and we came up with a list of tried-and-true teaching moves to help the truly non-talking kids open up a little when it comes time to talk about the work they've been doing.

What is the teacher's role in a conference? What is the student's role?

What is the teacher's role in a conference? What is the student's role?

Do you ever feel like kids just aren’t getting “it?” You look at what they are doing but the “what” isn’t telling you anything. Try looking below the surface to the find the… Continue reading →

Over the summer, we catch up on professional reading, we organize our classrooms, we make plans. In our reading and our planning, we imagine the very best possible scenarios. We see our children working… Continue reading →

When we watch experts confer with student writers, we are often stunned at the way in which they seem to pull teaching points out of thin air. Not all of us confer so effortlessly. Preparation, organization, and data collection will each go a long way toward ensuring your conferring is stronger than ever this year.

Carl Anderson suggests three lenses to look through when conferring with a student.

I pulled a child-sized chair over to Zach and sat down next to him. “How’s it going?” I asked. “Not good,” was his reply. “What seems to be the trouble?” Zach explained that… Continue reading →

Letting go can be hard. Here are some thoughts on how to engage and disengage from the writer during the process of building independence.

Make use of Google Hangouts when you need to work with writers outside of writing workshop time. Here are five quick ways to use this FREE technology.

Amanda Hartman, author of One to One: The Art of Conferring with Young Writers, offers tips for teachers on how to strengthen their writing conferences.

Our first blog series has come to an end. This post recaps the Tailoring Our Teaching Blog Series. Also, we'd like to know what YOU would like to write about the next time we host a blog series on TWT.

Lucy Calkins, author of many books on teaching writing, often says that conferring is the heart of writing workshop. I once heard her say to a group of graduate students that she wished… Read More →

It’s January, at the top of a mountain in Vermont. Ten six and seven year olds are lined up on the side of a ski trail. Their skis all pointing toward me, ready… Read More →

Take the time to compliment every child in every kind of conference you do.

Anna Gratz Cockerille provides tips for organizing and developing teaching toolkits you can use across the school year.

What do you find most difficult when it comes to conferring? I’d love to know your responses! Click here to read mine.

Today's guest blog post by Cathy Mere will help you jump on the electronic record-keeping bandwagon. Learn how to use Evernote to keep conferring notes on all of your students.

There are a variety of record-keeping apps, which make it possible to monitor your students’ writing progress. Confer, DailyNotes, Evernote, and Notability are four popular apps that promise to make it easier, dare-I-say… Read More →

Today I read a few pages from Peter Johnston’s book, Choice Words. You know this book, right? If not, it is a small, powerful read that can change your teaching life forever. (If… Read More →