Summer Southerlin Post 2 November Conferencing with Students

     Reading and writing workshop has been very interesting for me to teach, learn about, and watch grow as the months have passed. I have had a hard time learning how to properly conference with students and how to keep up with data. I started out by just writing it down in a notebook and writing what we discussed, but I had difficulty keeping up with who I conferred with, what we discussed, when we discussed it, and the goals we set. The students had forgotten what we discussed by the time I got back around to them. I am still having this problem except I have finally created a chart to keep up with what we discussed, their goal, and what book or books they are reading. I write down what goal they have on a sticky note for them to keep with them. Then, when I see them complete their goal I write down the date they met the goal and create a new for them based on their needs. I also use rubrics to assess them while they are reading during individual conferences or while they are silently reading, based on what I see them do as a reader. For example, if they look around, flip through pages, do not track, quickly running over the words, staying focused on the book the entire time and so on. I learn many things about the students when I conference with them. I have learned what the students like, what they do not like, what strategies they use to read and if they understand books or not. I would like to be able to use the conferences as a way to assess the students. Not in a way that they do not want to conference but in a way of meeting their goal or not. But, it takes so long to reach all my students I do not know how to get grades. I would like to know if I am conferencing correctly or not and if my conferences are beneficial. I will be using the questions we received today during our class to help guide me with questions to ask them during conferences. I believe the questions will be a great help with my conferences.