Workshop :: Conferences Cuts Reading in Half

Instead of taking them home to read, I conferenced with each student in class while the others worked on various parts of their piece. I spent - on average - five minutes with each student, responding to their Process Note questions (they write two specific questions and I focus my reading on those two issues only) and the risks (for every new piece of writing I require my students to take one new writing risk) she is doing.

It.Was.A.Breakthrough. And I kept thinking to myself, Why haven't I done this before?!

Now, there's a little book, Writing Tools, that saves me from creating my own mini-writing lessons. I take one chapter (all the chapters are short, less than four pages) and my students close read the text. Then, while I'm conferencing, they spend the time utilizing the suggestion(s) the author provides to improve the quality of their piece.

So far, so good. I'm DEFINITELY going to keep doing this.