“Four Ways to Work Against Yourself when Conferencing with Struggling Writers,” Kathryn Glasswell, Judy Parr, Stuart McNaughton
- The article highlights four core activities:
- direct writing instruction including modeling and minilessons
- teacher-student conferences
- independent writing/work time for students
- opportunities for students to publish their work for real audiences to read
With regards to effective writing conference, the importance of offering children opportunities to develop independence in writing, including taking responsibility for completing the tasks they are assigned. Also, good conferences should allow students enough time to consider the full range of writing issues, not just the given focus of a particular conference.
Making a writing conference truly effective can be difficult for even the most experienced teacher, as this article points out. Here are the four most often-repeated mistakes:
1. Confuse Quantity for Quality. This study found that struggling writers often receive more total teacher conference time than proficient writers but less sustained interaction time – which ultimately evens out. Basic point – it’s what you accomplish, not how long you spend working during writing conferences.
2. Let Yourself Be Interrupted (More Often and for Longer) while You Work. Though conference times for struggling writers and proficient writers is basically the same, in this study, the struggling writer conferences were interrupted significantly more frequently. The authors posit that perhaps because it is much more challenging to conference with an unmotivated or inattentive student, teachers allowed themselves to be interrupted more frequently – to the detriment of the struggling writer.
3. Place Your Major Instructional Emphasis Consistently on Low Levels of Text. Because struggling writers often have issues with basic or low-level grammar and mechanics, it is tempting to spend time working on those errors so that the students can progress to the next level. However, if those mistakes are continually repeated and the teacher continues to focus on those errors, it takes away from time that could be spent on discussing higher level thought processes (goals, intentions, rhetorical concerns), as in conferences with more proficient writers.
4. Promote Their Dependence on You by Taking Responsibility for Their Actions. Related to the previous mistake, spending too much time in teacher-directed conferences correcting grammar takes the responsibility for finding and correcting such errors off the student’s shoulders and puts it onto the teacher’s. This unintentionally sabotages the teaching goals of having the student recognize her errors – why would she if the teacher constantly does it for her?
Turning the Unintentional to Intentional: four ways to turn mistakes into positives:
1. & 2. Ensure Focused, Sustained, Uninterrupted Quality Time. It is important for teachers to establish ground rules for conferences so that students, especially those who have trouble focusing in the first place, receive their due amount of uninterrupted attention.
3. Vary the Route but Do Not Shift the Goal Posts. “If we want struggling writers to develop higher-level competencies with texts and to adopt reflective decision-making processes as writers, then the nature of our talk and actions must reflect this” (p.297).
4. Work Toward Withdrawing Support. Just as it is the goal of a parent to teach a child what he needs to know and to develop independence, teachers must provide students with the tools they need and then take a step back, allowing the students to find their own footing. Too much dependency will stifle growth.
