Valen Egan’s November Blog Post 4: Conferencing

I have always loved conferencing with my students.  I feel like it’s a precious time when I can really get to know my students on a one-on-one level.  Many times, I come away from the conferences much more knowledgeable about what my students need and/or ideas that I can implement to help them.

 

Through the years, I have always struggled to find the time to conference as much as I’d like and the format in which to document the conferences.  I’ve set goals for myself to conference with all students once a month and used all kinds of fancy conference sheets, but over the years, I wasn’t satisfied with the time I was spending and the information I was recording.  I’ve learned that I need to concentrate on what works for me as a teacher, and what information will be most valuable for my instructional planning.  So, I created my own reading conference sheet that includes a small section where I can take a running record, ask them comprehension questions on the book they shared with me, a list of reading strategies that I can mark if they need improvement on, and a place for me to write comments or for the student to set a reading goal for themselves.  I’ve also stopped worrying so much about getting 1 conference per month with each student, and I just do it as much as I can.  Taking the pressure off of myself actually lets these conferences happen more naturally which also provides better information.

 

With my focus group this year, I have really enjoyed listening to them read and observe their book choices.  Through conferencing, I have learned that many of them still struggle with making good book choices.  Some want to read books that are way too easy (probably to cope with the fact that they are struggling readers), and others choose books that are way too hard and don’t even seem to realize.  From my running records and diving more into miscue analysis, I’ve realized that pretty much all of the students in my focus group rely heavily on the visual cueing system.  Since conferencing allows a private time with a student, I’ve been able to take these opportunities to show them other strategies that they can rely on when they make errors while reading.  Sometimes just modeling how they can skip the word, read to the end of the sentence (or sometimes the page), go back and think about what makes sense, sets off a lightbulb in their eyes!  I absolutely love these moments with my students and feel they make the greatest impact with my reading instruction.