Mrs. Moser is finishing up a read aloud as I enter the room. When she cues the students to transition to their writing work, the room comes alive with energy. They are wrapping up their unit of study on personal narrative and everyone has a story that they’ve poured lots of themselves into.
Immediately students get to work and Mrs. Moser gets to conferencing.
What strikes me right away is the care and effort Mrs. Moser puts into each conference. She visibly works to really hear and understand what the student is trying to communicate through their writing. She does not jump in quickly with surface level suggestions or pat phrase responses. She really listens. She asks questions to get clarification. And when students don’t answer right away, she patiently waits. (Waiting quietly can be excruciatingly hard work for us as teachers, with our heads full of ideas we just can’t wait to propose . . .)
During a successful writing conference, the teacher is attempting to enter and understand the child’s thinking and then offer focused feedback on some part of the writing to “lift it up” to the next level. The conferences I observe here today are engaging and fun. These conferences are not about telling a student what to do, but are true conversations about and celebrations of the student’s writing.
Imagine what gift it is to have a private moment with the teacher, where you and your writing aspirations are the only thing in the world that matter just then! I find myself thinking how lucky each of these kids is to be the focus of just such a conference.
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