All teachers understand the value of responding personally to student work. But how do you use that feedback to help students improve their writing? In this workshop, you will examine the practical issues of planning and conducting writing conferences. You will also see classroom examples of formal and informal writing conferences.

I still find conferring with students a very hard part of teaching writing, though it's very rewarding. I've learned that even if a conference doesn't go well, and they don't all go all that well, just engaging children in talking about their process — what they're writing — is huge teaching.

— Katie Wood Ray, consultant and or co-author author of five books on teaching writing, including The Writing Workshop: Working Through the Hard Parts (And They're All Hard Parts)

Learning Goals

In this workshop you will explore how to:

• use conferences to focus on your students' growth as writers
• follow a predictable, comfortable, and inviting structure in writing conferences
• teach students how to use the language of writers to articulate their own writing process
• confer informally with your students