Reading Conferences: Conferences Are Conversations
It’s about conversation not interrogation!
Scheduling Conferences
Teacher-Initiated Conferences
• – Teacher identifies reading developmental stage
• – Teacher and student keep accurate records
• – Teacher schedules according to student need
Student-Initiated Conferences
• – Student wants/needs one-on-one time
• – Student needs help choosing a new book or different genre
• – Student wants to be heard reading
Planned Reading Discussions
To gather basic information:
• Rather than asking: “What kinds of books do you like to read?”
State your inquiry as a prompt:
• “Tell me about the kinds of books you like to read.” This gives the child less of an opportunity to say: “I don’t know…”
• You can ask more supportive, clarifying, or extending questions if needed to find out about the child’s literate life outside of school.
Managing Reading Conferences -Helpful Information
• Keep accurate notes!
• Using what you learn from these reading discussions, you can tailor your responses and interventions to each child’s particular needs.
What Do You Document?
• There’s little point documenting your verbal affirmations of what the reader is doing well.
• Document what you taught or expect the reader to work on:
Eg. Using context clues, Visualizing, chunking the word, reading with expression, giving up finger pointing to increase fluency
Model: Reading Conference Sheet
Tara: Working on who is narrating the story / Mai: Using only picture clues to work out words. Will also try looking at initial letter / Derya: Trying to use less finger pointing to improve fluency / Caleb: using chunking to tackle longer, unfamiliar words / Xavier: Learning to reread to work out unfamiliar words / Zanni:Will pay special attention to punctuation when reading.
Hien:
Using visualization to improve comprehension / Ronaldo: Using context clues to work out meaning of tricky words. / Carlos: Testing predictions against the text. / Minh: Practicing generating own questions when reading. / Trevor: Practicing creating sensory images from words in a text / Carlee: Thinking about a text after reading
Maria:
Knowing what to do when the reading doesn’t make sense / Gavin: Making good choices- Is this a just right book for me? / Dorian: Remembering to practice personal goal set for reading. ‘Using picture clues last’
Conferring or Assessing?
• Conference frequently with students.
• Use a balanced approach for assessing.
-Some conferences should be discussions between two readers: you and the child.
-As needed, use a running record or other assessment tool to monitor students’ reading process and progress.
Oral Reading Records
• Running records of children’s reading throughout the year provides distinct advantages.
• Running records provide greater flexibility and many more opportunities for assessment since they can be taken “on the run” using any text a child is reading.
Using Oral-Reading Records to Match Children with Books
If children read books that are too difficult, it’s unlikely they’ll be able to sustain their independent reading long enough to practice the skills they need to work on.
Once the meaning of the text is lost, as generally happens when a book is too
hard, children must resort to sounding out each unfamiliar word they meet.
They need to read books that support their use of background knowledge and language structure, as well as letter-sound relationships.
Helping Students Find “Just-Right” Books
• You may need to have initial guidance in helping emergent and early readers select books for their independent reading.
• You want them to use a variety of information sources and strategies as they read and stay engaged in their reading longer. This gives you increased time to help and confer with other readers!
• Teach students how to use the “Goldilocks Rule” when they are trying to find books that are just right:
Children Need To:
• Read books that are matched to their stage of reading.
• Learn to use a range of comprehension strategies flexibly.
• See how all of what they’re doing fits together and makes sense.
Retellings and Reading Discussions
• Help you assess comprehension.
• Help you direct children to books that will engage and interest them.
• Help inform your teaching.
What Does Retelling Involve?
• The teacher asks the child to tell about what he or she has read.
• Children who are new to retelling may attempt to retell the entire text. Therefore we must explain that they needn’t tell the whole story, just the main things that happened.
Difficulty in the Retelling Process
• The book may be too hard.
• It may have taken too long to complete.
• They may need to learn more comprehension strategies to handle longer text.
• They may need a clearer explanation of your expectations.
Find Out Why the Child Doesn’t Understand What Has Been Read
• The difficulty may be at the word level---
– If accuracy rate is below 97%
• The difficulty may be at the text level---
– If accuracy rate is 97% or above yet comprehension is lacking, the text may be too long; or there were too many challenging or unfamiliar words with which the reader has spent so much time trying to articulate that the meaning of the text has been lost;
• The text may be too complex to fully understand.
Educate Parents
• Parents are often confused because they think their child can read well when he or she can decode words. They fail to distinguish between reading with comprehension and “word calling” without a clear understanding of the meaning the words convey.
• Too often parents encourage the child to read harder texts than he or she is
actually capable of reading, leaving the reader with little “mental space” to
attend to comprehension.
A Few Suggestions…..
• Short conferences are more effective than long conferences.
• Frequent conferences are more effective than infrequent conferences.
• Try to limit the reader’s response and yours to one concern. We teach more effectively if we take one step at a time.
• If you don’t know how to respond, draw more about the process out of the
reader or encourage them to expand on their personal opinion of the text.
Questions that Nudge Students to Say More:
• Could you say more about that?What do you think ------means …?
Questions about Students' Reading Strategies
• Have you tried the strategy we looked at today?
• Have you been thinking about our reading strategies?
• What can I help you with?
Questions that Come from What We Already Know about Students
• Show me how you are using the reading strategy we discussed during our last conference
Questions Connected to our Explicit teaching
Have you tried out what we talked about today in today’s lesson?
Remember how we talked yesterday in the mini-lesson about chunking words
Have you used this strategy to help you work out tricky words?
Questions about a Student's Decisions
• Why did you pick this place to reread?
• Why did you [repeat this line several times]?
Helpful Language for Conferences
• What can I help you think about?
• What goals do you have for your reading/
• Is this book just right for you? Why?
• Are there any confusing parts?
• Do you have any questions for me?
• How well are you understanding your book?
• Read a part you really liked
• Did you notice this author…
• When I read this I…
• How does your reading sound?
• Talk to me about your reading
• Let me show a way to figure out that word
• Would you recommend this book to other readers?
Once you have a line of thinking, decide what the reader is telling you to teach him/her.
The lines of discussion that guide us through a conference are those that
focus on the reading process, the readers’ needs and their hopes and
concerns.
Alan Wright
Education Consultant
ALVIC Educational Consultancy