Chapters 10, 11, and 12

In these few chapters I'd like to point out one concept that I really feel passionate about. When it talked about conferencing with a writer one on one, I saw the point of letting the child know one thing they did well. A couple of the phrases that can be used are "One strength I notice about your writing is, or so one thing I notice that you do well as a writer is..." I feel so strong about beginning with a positive in a conference with a teacher, because as a child I can hardly recall moments where my teacher did this. Conferences began with the problem and how to fix that problem. After these types of meetings there really was no way you could come out of them feeling positive about yourself as a student in school. If you begin with the positive at least the child has something to remember, and maybe say...."well I need work on this, however the teacher did say that I was really excelled when it came to this." Next, when working on fixing a problem in writing, I also feel it's best to use the student's work as the example. If I were to use an example of something the student did wrong from an old paper I have in my records, I feel the instruction may be dismissed. But since the work and ideas flowed from this particular student, then they are more likely to understand and connect, and also see how to fix the area they are struggling with. I also agreed with the idea of group conferences which I believe I touched in a little in my previous blog. If the actual lesson was previously taught, and I as a teacher notice a few students who are still having trouble, say adding periods to the end of sentences. There is no need to teach the entire lesson again, but I see it would be more sufficient to conduct a group conference. So in a way I'm kind of killing two birds with one stone, I'm not taking valuable class time away from all students, and I'm still almost giving an individual lesson to a smaller group of students. Which allows for more one on one time.