“Learning to Confer” – Ch. 14, Lucy Calkins

Wow! I am learning so much about conferencing with students, peers, and myself about writing! How wonderful!! This chapter of Calkins book is similar to the last one in that she tries to give us more details about conferencing with students about their writing. I appreciated her talking about the different types of conferences that you can have with students about their writing.
Content conferences are simply interested conversations we have with students about the content of their writing, or even their lives. “Through content conferences, writers can also learn to anticipate their audience’s hunger for information and to anticipate places where their readers may be confused or need clarification.” (pg. 235) Design conferences allow us to meet with students about the structure and sequence of their writing. “Once writers can tell an event as it happened, they must learn that they need not follow the sequence of the event, nor do they need to show the whole scene.” (pg. 239) Process conferences help us to focus on the writing process, itself, with students. Here, one goal is to help students to ask questions of their writing, about what worked or didn’t work, such as, “Was that a wise choice?” or “Have I done something new as a writer?” (pg. 244) Evaluation conferences allow us to work with students to help them decide if they have truly finished with this piece of writing, or if they can still improve it. Students must ask themselves, “What’s my best work, less good work, worst work?” (pg. 246) and other similar questions about their current and past writing to see how their writing has changed, improved.
I did not realize that there were all these different types of conferences that all serve a different purpose. Amazing! Incorporating each of these into your classroom with writing workshop will help your students get the most from their writing.