Overview

This virtual workshop will help you understand key conferring concepts, as well as acquire the strategies you’ll need to confer effectively with your students, and is based on Carl’s books, A Teacher’s Guide to Writing Conferences and How’s It Going?: A Practical Guide to Conferring with Student Writers.

In the morning, Carl will start with an overview of the reasons why conferring is such a powerful teaching method, and a discussion of the qualities of a good writing conference. Then you’ll learn about strategies you’ll need to help you navigate the first two parts of a writing conference: first, discovering what kind of work a student is trying to do as a writer, and, second, assessing and deciding what to teach the student about their writing work.

In the afternoon, you’ll learn about four ways to teach students in the third and most important part of a conference: teaching the student how to do their writing work more effectively. The day will end with a discussion of how to manage conferring in your classroom or online, which will include a discussion about using record-keeping forms to track student progress across the school year.

Across the day, you’ll watch and analyze video of Carl conferring with students in different grade levels, and you’ll be reading and discussing student writing samples to help you get some practice with the kind of assessment that will help you confer powerfully with students.

Also, throughout the day, Carl will give you tips for how to confer effectively on online platforms such as Zoom or Google Meet, and use the tools that these kinds of platforms give you to make all the important conferring moves.

By the end of the workshop, you’ll have learned numerous conferring strategies that you can use right away when you work with your students.

Learning Objectives

Participants will:

• Understand why conferring is such an effective teaching method
• Become familiar with key conferring concepts
• Know the three parts of a writing conference
• Learn strategies for helping students talk about their writing to help you discover what they’re doing as writers
• Practice assessing student writing by recognizing common writing patterns
• Learn about four methods for teaching students in conferences
• Know how to confer with students in-person, and online

Who Should Attend?

Classroom teachers of grades K-8, administrators, curriculum coordinators, writing teachers, literacy specialists, coaches, and staff developers.

Time

Each workshop will run from 8:30am-3:30pm (PT); please make note of the time zone! Log in at least 15 minutes early to give yourself time to get set up.