Conferring: The Heart of Readers’ Workshop

Photo credit: stickynotes.ca

After you’ve researched and decided, it’s time to teach.  I generally start with pointing out something that the student is doing well.  “I like the way you _____, because ______.”  Then I choose a concise teaching point that I can write down on a sticky note.  I give the student a copy and have a copy for myself on my clipboard.

I always limit myself to one teaching point.  This could be anything from a grammar point to a point about how writers have to think like readers.  Here’s a sampling of teaching points from last week:

  • Writers have to continually ask, “Do my readers have the background knowledge to understand what I’m writing?”  If not writers have to explain more about what they’re writing.
  • Writers need to be careful of strings of adjectives and find the perfect adjective to describe something.
  • Sometimes writing goes on and on without letting the reader pause and take a breath.  Writers use punctuation to give those breaks to readers.
  • Some verbs are irregular in the past tense, like the verb put.  You can use the anchor chart about irregular verbs to find the correct way to write verbs in the past tense.

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