Conferring Lesson Plan

Conferring with elementary school students is a great way to assess the student's work, explain difficult concepts, and answer any student questions. Conferring may be difficult to work into a classroom schedule due to time constraints, but the teacher who chooses to invest time in this process will be rewarded with an increased conceptual knowledge and critical thinking ability among students.

Research:

Evaluate and assess the student's prior work. Figure out what exactly the student needs to work on and questions you want to ask the student. You should determine several areas in which the writer is doing well, as well as problem areas and concepts that need to be addressed and reinforced.

Examples of questions for the writer: What do you like the best about your writing? What was hardest for you? Where do you think the writing needs some work?

Example evaluation of what writer is doing well: Used capitals at beginning of each sentence and ended each sentence with a period. The writer almost always left some space between the ending period of one sentence and the first word of the next sentence. The author used past tense in an appropriate manner. Every sentence in the piece was complete-there were no sentence fragments. The writer was able to distinguish "too" and "two" and use them in the appropriate contexts. Also, the writer realized that "Duluth" needed to be capitalized.

Example of concepts to address: Using commas when writing a list, adding more descriptive verbs instead of "got" "went" and "like", discuss words that end in "er" and how to spell them (brother instead of brothr).

Decide:

I will teach about using commas when writing a list of objects. I chose this concept because the writer's lack of commas interferes with the organization of the piece and makes it confusing for the reader. Using punctuation correctly is essential if the writer wants to communicate effectively with his or her audience.

Teach:

Begin by complimenting the things the writer did well, and asking the writer questions about her work. "I think it's great that you are able to write complete sentences, with periods at the end and capitalized letters at the beginning. Since all the sentences are complete and you used punctuation, I could really understand everything you were talking about. In fact, I could read the sentences exactly the way that I would say them out loud-when I read, I pause at each period at the end of a sentence. This is just like how when I'm talking, I pause at the end of each sentence."

Then explain that the lack of punctuation in the list of objects makes it hard for people to understand.

"But when I read the end of your story, I didn't really understand what I was reading, because there were a lot of words without punctuation. I tried to read it out loud, but the words didn't seem to flow together. " Read the last sentence without pausing for commas. Ask the student how the last sentence is supposed to sound, and when they recite it, make note of how they paused after each item on the list. "But there isn't any punctuation in your list to show that you're supposed to pause after every word. Can I show you something that I like to do when I write a list of words in my story? I use commas to show where the person reading the story needs to pause." Write a sentence with a list of objects in it, but no commas. Read the list without pausing. Point out that the sentence doesn't sound at all like how a list might be recited in normal conversation. "Now I'm going to add a comma in between each thing on the list." Model the addition of comma into the list-what they look like, where they're placed and how they should be followed by one space before adding the next word to the list. "Then, before the last object on my list, I'll add the word "and" to let the person reading the list know that the list is almost over." Read the passage, this time pausing after each comma. Ask the student to show you how she would add commas to her own writing.

Link: "Today and for the rest of your life, I want you to use commas to separate things in a list whenever there is a list in your writing. Then everybody who reads your writing will understand that they are reading a list of objects that go together, and if they read that list out loud, it will sound just like it would in a normal conversation. When the readers can understand that there is a list of objects in your writing and not just a bunch of random words, they will understand and enjoy your story even more!"