My very first conferences!

I’m so glad I read chapters 10-12 before our field study, because I incorporated my reading into my teaching today.

Hale starts chapter 10 with negative experiences a first year teacher might have, and then she transitions into how to focus on positives first followed by how to improve your weaknesses as a teacher. After the opening, Hale related this personal tidbit on her first day teaching to how to give feedback to young writers in a conference setting starting with the strengths they possess. The first task my teacher had me do today was to have a child read a story to me that they wrote, and I was to edit and publish their story by typing it on the computer. I was able to do two complete conferences of this sort. Both times I let the student read their story in its entirety. I started by conference by complimented them on one or two specific crafts that I saw that they utilized.

My first student wrote, “My sister is really, really, REALLY cute!” I told the student that I loved how she repeated the word really to emphasis how cute her sister is and that she used all capital letters with the last really to make it even stronger. From that point I was able to praise her on her use of adjectives to describe her sister. She said, “My sister has big brown eyes and fluffy brown hair.” I started to read a section that had no periods and asked her what she thought when I read it all together without taking a pause. She said it was too fast. I asked her what type of punctuation I could use to slow it down. She right away wrote two periods in the one, long run on sentence. After her editing, I asked her to tell me what I had just said to reiterate the concept taught like Hale had suggested. She then said that you need to put periods to end sentences to show a pause is needed when reading the story. I was pleased with her answer and knew that she understood. I also asked her why writing the same word more than once is a good writing tool. She also was able to repeat what I had said about making a strong statement. Overall Hale’s tactics proved to be beneficial. I felt the child had learned in a positive manor while also having fun at the same time. I was careful to word my questioning like Hale worded her examples in the book. I said, “I noticed that you used the same word three times in a row. It makes your writing very visual to me and is a good thing to do.” I then asked her if she knew why I might think that.

The next child had different crafts that she did well. She used periods and exclamation marks all correctly, but had many spelling errors. However, the spelling errors were on words that are beyond her grade level, so I knew she was going above and beyond to try new words even if she knew they weren’t always correct. I complimented her on the job well done. I then said that I noticed the word Disney in the title had an “e” in it and I asked her on page one why the Disney on that page looked different. She automatically pointed out the “e”. I followed this question with, “Do you think you need and ‘e’ and why?” She was able to sound the word out and make sense of the vowel. I was very pleased.

My first conferences went well. I tried to incorporate what I learned and by doing so the children proved they learned something new. I did my job as a teacher in respect to this activity. I hope I can continue to build on this experience.