Four Keys to Hacking Student Writing Conferences

“Can I ask a question about this machine [computer]? How can I make this text look like that text?” And we had a little mini-lesson on margins, tabs, and centering text.

“I’m not making any changes. I didn’t think we were supposed to.” And we had a little mini-lesson on individual differences in the level of polish in initial drafting on paper, whether it’s more efficient for an individual to make revisions as one types or to type up a written draft without thinking and then revise.

“I moved these sentences into the next paragraph because I realized they were on a different topic.” Yeay! (In response to my follow-up question to "Did you make changes as you typed?" "Oh, lots!" "Can you show me one?")

“Is this right?” In answer to this question, I asked the student to get all his words on the paper first, then see what he thought about how they looked and sounded. And then in the editing I could help with anything he hadn’t been able to identify.

“Is it okay to start this sentence with ‘But’?” Here’s the beauty of conferring individually. Whereas the previous student didn’t have near enough words on the screen yet to be wondering whether they were “right,” this one was ready for a conversation about audience, purpose, and reading like writers: how a lot of the YA fiction he was reading has sentences starting with “but” because that’s how we talk; however, a non-fiction essay for school probably doesn’t want to sound conversational. It wants to prove you know the writing conventions. So what you’ve really written is a compound sentence—just change the period to a comma and make it all one sentence. Or change the “but” to a “however” if you really want to keep the period and sound formal!

I love having these individual conversations with 6th and 7th grade writers. And it is so much more rewarding to answer a student’s question about something she’s tried with her writing than to try to get her to value what I think she should try!

And yet, writing conferences with students STILL make me nervous. When I buckle to those nerves and hesitantly approach a student, afraid to interrupt her writing flow, afraid I won’t have anything to offer him, asking, “So…how’s it going? Any questions?” it’s a self fulfilling prophecy. Any student worth his or her salt has learned that the mature, trustworthy, independent answer to those questions is supposed to be, respectively, “Fine,” and “No.” Sure enough—10 minutes and I’ve made the round of the class. They’re all fine and have no questions. 

But when I think of the skills I targeted and taught, the ones the students are supposed to be practicing and incorporating in this piece of writing, I want to help focus students on those skills. I become truly curious about what they are doing and how they are doing—not just about whether they are accomplishing the targets, but about what they are thinking about those targets and how their writing and learning process is working. Finally, I want students to own that writing and learning process—not just to quietly listen to the lessons I teach and accept the feedback I give, but to be able to monitor their mastery of those lessons and feedback, to ask their own questions, to identify the ones they find key, or difficult, or empowering, and to get the help they want and need. 

So here’s how I set myself and my 6th and 7th grade students up for the good writing conferences that happened this week:

1. I identified the purposes of the writing and the skills I’d targeted and taught: Five non-fiction text structures (descriptive, sequence, compare/contrast, cause/effect, problem/solution); writing a paragraph with a topic sentence and at least 3 more sentences, all related to the topic sentence; and writing about something they are good at or enjoy doing so that students can focus on the skill and not learning new content and so that I can learn something about them. 
2. I told them that as they worked, I was going to come around and ask them 3 questions that they should be prepared to answer: (1) Where are you in the process of writing the 5 paragraphs and typing them up? (2) How comfortable are you with typing? (3) What about your writing process—are you making any changes as you type?
3. I told them after my 3 questions, they would ask me 1 question about their writing.
4. I found myself truly intrigued about the different topics the students had chosen, the different strategies they used for processing words from paper to computer, and the different questions they had.

It was a coaching process. Some still said they didn’t have a question. And I said they could think about it, and I’d get back to them after I’d been around to the other students. The thing is, I didn’t have time to get back to some of them. We filled up the entire period with excellent individual conversations about students’ writing.

So here are my keys:

1. Identify targets
2. Prepare questions
3. Elicit student questions
4. Be truly curious

How do you engage students in conversations about their writing?