Fly Fishing Masters 2005
Peer Conferencing With A Purpose
Peer Conferencing with a Purpose: Using Writer’s Talk to Strengthen Collaboration among Classmates
The writing conference draws on an age-old technique—engaging the learner in conversation to help him or her think through the problem at hand. Socrates could have saved a lot of time by explaining the concept of the square to the boy, but that would have demonstrated Socrates’ mastery of the concept, not the boy’s. (Thomason, T. (1998). Writer to Writer: How to Conference Young Authors. p. 25.)
Human beings crave social interactions, there’s no question about it. We thrive on building relationships with other people throughout the course of our lifetime. We yearn for positive relationships with other people to develop who we are as individuals. We desire conversation. Abraham Maslow developed a hierarchy of needs that states what all human beings must have in order to survive. One of those needs is the hungering for love, affection, and belongingness. Maslow states that “when the needs for safety and for physiological well-being are satisfied, the next class of needs for love, affection and belongingness can emerge…People seek to overcome feelings of loneliness and alienation. This involves both giving and receiving love, affection and the sense of belonging.” This need of belonging is met when individuals can develop bonds with others. In order to create those bonds, we need to converse and interact with each other consistently. Day in and day out, we work on building communities around us with our relationships. We develop work communities, neighborhood communities, school communities, social communities, and so on. Sometimes our different communities mesh, and sometimes they don’t. The one common thread with all of our communities and relationships is the fact that we must communicate and cooperate with the people in those communities in order for our relationships to thrive, and in order for us to continue to develop as human beings. Why, then, should education and the institution of learning be any different? So many times I have read about classrooms of students sitting in silence in straight rows completing tasks out of workbooks, never so much as looking up to communicate with another student in that classroom the entire school day. Luckily, the educational paradigm has shifted, and teachers are beginning to understand the value that conversations hold in their classrooms. I hope that after reading my article, you will value and employ conversations in your classroom on a whole new level. If you do this, you will begin to see a remarkable change in your students and their writing abilities.
Introduction
I have been teaching the subject of writing for seven years in the Jefferson County Public School District in Louisville, Kentucky. In those seven years, I have come across writing lessons that both bombed miserably and developed beautifully. I have experienced researchers, professors, colleagues, and friends that have helped me grow as a writing teacher and as a writer. Many of the lessons that I teach to my students today have been borrowed from many individuals and adapted to meet the needs of my students.
I currently teach 4th grade at Farmer Elementary in Louisville, Kentucky. Teaching nine and ten year olds to develop a passion for writing has been quite a journey for me. Teaching myself to develop my passion for writing has also been quite a journey. When I first began teaching, I assumed that all students just “got it” and knew how to write their stories down on paper. Boy, was I wrong! My first year teaching writing, I felt like I was sort of “thrown to the wolves” and not given any sort of direction at all. I am sure that many first-year teachers feel the same way. I remember referring to the writing lessons provided by the school district in order to teach writing to my classes. While these were great resources, they weren’t my own. When presenting these lessons to my students, I found that the students’ writing had no “umph,” no passion. I was at a loss. I had followed the lessons to a “t,” but was not satisfied with the results. It was not until after my first year of teaching that I realized that I needed to project a passion for writing before my students could project that in their own writing. I needed to become a writer and write alongside with my students. Once I began doing this, I began to learn more and more about myself as a writer and about the entire process of writing.
My biggest concern during the writing process was trying to find the time to conference with each of my students. Since fourth grade writing portfolios were scored by teachers and sent to the state of Kentucky to be added to the total CATS (Commonwealth Assessment Testing System) academic index, I felt the pressure to help my students create strong writing pieces. In order to make sure that the writing pieces showcased each student and their individual writing abilities, I wanted to meet with each student before their writing piece was “complete” and before the piece could be added to their portfolio. I found this to be difficult to fit into my daily and weekly schedules. I needed to find a way to meet the needs of all of my students, but was struggling. Even when I did manage to meet with each of my students, I realized that my writing conferences never fully reached the deep conversation level that I had read about in professional texts.
What to do? I wanted to develop my writing conferences to include rich conversation with my students. The major theme of Vygotsky’s theoretical framework is that social interaction plays a fundamental role in the development of cognition. Vygotsky (1978) states: “Every function in the child’s cultural development appears twice: first, on the social level, and later, on the individual level; first, between people (interpsychological) and then inside the child (intrapsychological). This applies equally to voluntary attention, to logical memory, and to the formation of concepts. All the higher functions originate as actual relationships between individuals” (p. 57). It is understood, then, that learning is a social process. Therefore, writing needs to be a social process as well. So, I tried meeting with my students during writer’s workshop. Sometimes, I would spend the entire writer’s workshop meeting with only one or two students. At this rate, there was no possible way that I would be able to meet with each one of my students every week. I started meeting with students during my planning period. This helped alleviate my anxiety about meeting with all of my students. When I would conference with my students during their writer’s workshop and during my planning period, I could end up meeting with 4-6 students each day. This way, I was able to meet with all of my students at least once a week. However, I was exhausted at the end of each day and still needed to stay after school in order to gather my thoughts, materials, and plans for the following days—since I had utilized my planning period to conference with students. After reflecting on this practice, I realized that I wasn’t teaching with best practices in mind.
So, then, I decided to try a different conferencing strategy. Teachers have to be flexible in their teaching, right? I heard a colleague of mine at a different school talking about developing writing mentors at her school. She mentioned how it helped to boost her school’s writing scores, how it helped provide the students with positive influences, and how it helped the classroom teacher with conferencing. I decided to try it out with my class. I sent out an email to adults in our school building asking who might be interested in becoming a writing mentor to my fourth grade students. I had a decent response and was able to pair each of my fourth grade students up with an adult in the building. The adults would meet with their student once a week to discuss where each student was in their writing process. I still met with my students during writer’s workshop, but not to the extent that I had been prior to this. Although this was a helpful process for me, as a classroom teacher, I felt that my students were not benefiting from it as much as I had hoped. Upon reflecting on this practice, I realized that students were still relying on an adult to help guide them through the conferencing process. I wanted my students to ultimately become independent writers and lead their own conferences with their classmates.
I still wasn’t satisfied with the way that my writing conferences were going. I wanted to try something that would really help my students develop into the strongest writers that they could become. I read more professional books, spoke with colleagues, and decided to try peer conferencing in my classroom. Aha! In his book A Door Opens: Writing in Fifth Grade, Jack Wilde (1993) mentions, “What students value even more than the teacher’s perspective on their writing is their peer’s” (p. 4). I wanted my students to practice something that would be meaningful and authentic to them. In order for students to become stronger writers, they needed to be able to talk about the writing process and about their writing pieces. Regie Routman (2000) believes that learning is a social process; “All learning involves conversation. The ongoing dialogue, internal and external, that occurs as we read, write, listen, compose, observe, refine, interpret, and analyze is how we learn” (p. xxxvi). Socializing with others through conversation strengthens a writer’s ability to comprehend what their audience is looking for. Allowing our students to become social learners when writing will ultimately increase their writing and reading abilities. If a student is able to talk out the process that he/she takes when writing, then we know that he/she “gets it.” Conversation is a critical part of learning how to make meaning and how to make sense out of the world in which we live.
So, then, I decided to let my students “go at it” at peer conferencing without any clear direction from me. Not so good! I then read more professional texts and found some peer conferencing checklists and handouts that I thought would work—we’ve all seen the “ready to use” checklists in teacher workbooks and magazines, right? Yes, these checklists and handouts helped, but my students weren’t really having meaningful conversations about their writing with their peers; they were merely checking off what needed to be checked off on the checklist and listing questions/reactions on their handouts. I wanted the conversations my students were having with each other to be authentic, not superficial. I wanted my students to be able to think on their own, not have to always refer to a worksheet or checklist to plan their thinking. So…
I soon began to grasp how dependent my students were on me to help develop their writing pieces. I realized that I had been focusing so much on developing the pieces and not so much on developing the writer. Once I came to this understanding, the way that I taught writing to my students changed dramatically. I realized that I wanted my students to become independent thinkers and writers. Barry Lane (1993) affirms this belief of mine when he states, “Peer conferencing is a central element of a student-centered classroom. The more you empower your students, the less they will have to line up at your desk for a conference” (p. 67). I wanted my students to eventually think, reflect, and analyze on their own. I would only be their teacher for one year, so I needed to prepare them for their years ahead. The turning point for me really came when I took a summer class in 2003 at Bellarmine University in Louisville, Kentucky, led by Cindy Gnadinger and co-taught by Donna Stottman. It was there that I learned the conferencing strategy/process that I currently use with my students today. Thomason (1998) suggests, “Only when students know that we are more interested in what they have to say than how they have said it, when they know that we approach them as a reader and not a critic, will they feel free to take risks in their writing. Remember, children develop language through interaction. Just as they learn to talk by talking to someone who responds, typically a parent, they learn to write by writing to someone who responds” (p. 21).
What is the Purpose of Conferencing During Writer’s Workshop?
What is the purpose of conferencing during the writer’s workshop, you ask? Writing conferences are critical to the writing process. In his book, Writer to Writer, Tommy Thomason (1998) believes that “the writing conference is one of the most valuable teaching strategies in the process-oriented classroom, because it helps the writer to think through the piece at hand. The writing conference is not meant to create a dependency. Its goal is to help young writers think about the issues any writer must consider during writing. Writing conferences help writers focus on what they have written and talk through ways the writing can be improved” (p. 3). Writers of all ages need to have the opportunity to meet with someone to discuss their writing. Sometimes it takes someone on the outside to help a writer to respond to questions that otherwise would have gone unanswered in a piece of writing. Sometimes all it takes is for someone else to tell the writer what works in their writing and what is lacking. Simply stated, conferences are conversations about writing. If you think of a conversation that you have with a friend, you would probably think of the words to describe that conversation as honest, free, laid back, and natural, right? That’s exactly how writing conferences are supposed to be described: honest, free, laid back, and natural.
My goal, as a teacher, is to get my students to the level where they are conferencing each other—otherwise known as peer conferencing. I want my classroom to be more student-centered rather than teacher-directed. Having a student-centered classroom fits right with my beliefs about education, exploration, and discovery. I use the “catching fish” philosophy to best describe peer conferences in my classroom. Metaphorically, if I wanted to, I could simply give fish to my students to eat without making them work for it. I could serve it up to them on a silver platter ready to be enjoyed. But what good will this to do help make them independent learners? I could tell them what they needed to put in their writing, heck, I could even do it for them if I wanted to, but how will that help to develop their own passion for writing? It wouldn’t. If everything was given to you your entire life, would you ever feel any motivation to work hard for anything? Probably not. Instead of giving my students fish, I wanted to teach them to fish so that they would be prepared to be independent and self sufficient throughout their lives as writers. I wanted my students to explore, create, discover, ask questions, and wonder about the world around them. In order to do this, I needed to teach them how to do all of this on their own. Peer conferencing is much like catching fish. In order to be good at it, you have to know the process fairly well. You have to consistently practice at it in order to reel in a good catch. My students learn, early on, that they can not rely on me to help “fix” their writing pieces. This is where their peers come in. This is where they begin to flourish as independent writers. Carl Anderson (2000), in his book How’s It Going?, suggests, “Once we’ve learned how to confer well, we’ve got a power chip that never quits. It generates original, strong teaching each day, each year, for every writer, forever and ever. When we learn about the teaching of writing, conferring is the subject that promises the biggest payoff, for it is the foundation of writing workshop” (page xiii).
What Does It Look Like? Introducing the Writer’s Toolbox to Promote Writer’s Talk
Thomason (1998) attains, “Writing conferences are most effective when they occur in a classroom where ‘writing talk’ permeates the atmosphere” (p. 17). We are social beings and crave conversations with others. We learn from interaction with others. So, it only makes sense to allow our students to use language in our classrooms that relates to what they are learning. Ketch (2005) states, “Creating classroom conversations, where students are authentically learning, accessing information, and reflecting on and trying out their theories about the world will create students who comprehend and think for themselves” (p. 11).
What, then, is “writer’s talk?” Let me explain it this way. Think about when you walk into a horse racing track. Since I am from Louisville, Kentucky, I will refer to Churchill Downs, home of the Kentucky Derby. What do you hear? You hear language such as, “Who did you put in your exacta? How many furlongs will this race be? Is this horse bred to run at this distance? Let’s parlay it! Was that a bullet workout? Who is in the sire line of that gelding? How much are you going to wager?” If you want to consistently win at the races, you have to know what you are talking about. In order to understand horseracing and betting, you have to be able to understand the language that is being used at the track. You have to be familiar with the lingo. If you can’t understand what is being said, you become lost. It’s the same thing during the writer’s workshop. Students need to understand the language of writing before they can begin to master the concept of the writing process. Teachers and students need to use “writer’s talk” in the classroom on a daily basis. When students can communicate like a writer, then they become more knowledgeable about the process of writing, and in turn become more independent writers themselves.
The way that I introduce using writer’s talk in the classroom is through a tool called our “writer’s toolbox.” At the very beginning of the school year, I use writer’s talk with my students so that they start to become accustomed to it. During the first six weeks of writing, I work on building my community of writers. Each student in my classroom has a writer’s notebook and a writing folder. Their writer’s notebook remains in their folder, and anything that we use as a reference for writing goes into that folder, as well. The first thing that the students receive to go into their writing folder is a blank “writing toolbox.” This “writing toolbox” is a blank matrix where students insert pictures and sketches of writing skills that they have learned across the course of the entire school year. When students learn a new writing skill, they create a symbol to add to one of their matrixes within their “writing toolbox.” For example, one of the very first skills that I teach my students is the strategy of observation. Good writers need to be able to observe their environments and surroundings. After I teach a mini lesson on observation and allow the students time to observe and write, I then instruct the students to add the skill of observation to their “writer’s toolbox.” Students may illustrate a symbol that represents the skill of observation. Some students draw eyeglasses, while others simply draw eyes. I have even had my most creative students draw a microscope to represent this skill. Students are then able to refer to this tool when reflecting on their writing. This is especially valuable when it comes time for peer conferencing. The writing toolbox helps to promote writer’s talk in my classroom. Students are familiar with the lingo that I expect them to use during writer’s workshop, and it pays off when they have their conferences with their classmates. Ketch (2005) testifies, “Conversation is a critical part of learning how to make meaning and how to make sense out of the world in which we live” (p. 10). By socializing and conversing with their peers concerning their writing, students grow in strength and confidence as young writers.
Putting It in Motion
Teaching my students to use writer’s talk during the writing workshop begins at the very beginning of the school year. My students learn early on, the writing terminology that I want for them to use in their peer conferences. I view peer conferences as being an everyday occurrence in my writer’s workshop, so I don’t single out certain days to just work on peer conferencing. Instead, I use the language of writers to help my students understand how an effective peer conference occurs. If you were to walk into my classroom now, you would see and hear a buzz of commotion going on. Some students may be working privately on their draft, while others are reaching out to their toolbox as a way to revise their piece. Other students may be discussing their piece with a classmate, or with a group of classmates. Never do I have my entire class at the same step in the writing process. I enjoy writer’s workshop so much because it’s my chance to peruse around the room watching buddy authors in progress. Beginning with the writer’s notebook and toolbox, my students develop an understanding that they will speak like writers and that they will read like writers throughout the day, not just during writing time.
A Snapshot of Peer Conferencing
It’s 10:30 a.m. on Monday morning and my students are finishing up with their reading workshop. When I say that it’s writing time, you can hear a few students gasp under their breath, “Yes!” My students thoroughly enjoy their writing time…and that’s not because of me, it’s because they have been given the proper tools that they need to ensure that they are always successful during writing time. My students walk quietly back to their desks and get out their yellow writing folder, writer’s notebook, writing toolbox, and pencil. I always provide a brief mini-lesson to the students concerning something that I want for them to focus on during their hour of writer’s workshop. Some students are burning to begin writing on their yellow draft paper…they cannot wait to get their words and ideas on paper. Others are ready to begin sharing their writing with their classmates. This particular day, I talked with my students about making sure to provide dialogue in their writing to help with the flow of their personal piece. Once I have shared, I let the students go around the room to become authors. They always take with them their writing folder, writers notebook, and writing toolbox. They know that they need to have these items readily available to them in order to have a successful writing workshop. Several of my students stretch out flat on the floor to write. One student asks to write in the hallway. A pair of girls, travel to the bean bag chairs to conference with each other on their writing pieces. I keep an eye on the rest of the class while I make my way to eavesdrop on their peer conference. I make sure to keep myself inconspicuous because I want the students to really talk with each other and not make up something that just simply sounds good because the teacher is listening. I hear Savannah lead the conference by saying, “OK, so where are you at in your writing and what can I do to help you with it?” McKenzie responds by saying, “Well, I think that I’m pretty much finished, but I really need some help with my lead. I don’t like the way that it sounds. I don’t think that it catches my reader’s attention. Can you help me come up with some ideas that might help make it pop?” Savannah nods her head and then McKenzie begins to read the beginning to her personal writing piece. As McKenzie reads, Savannah never takes her focus off of her partner. She jots down notes on a post it note to discuss with McKenzie when she is finished. After one minute of reading her lead, McKenzie looks up at Savannah and asks, “What did you think?” Savannah answers McKenzie by saying, “I really liked how you asked me questions to draw me into your story, but I wonder if you could start it another way. Have you tried beginning your story with a ‘Show, Don’t Tell’ lead? Or even a “Snapshot” lead? Or what about beginning your story with dialogue like Mrs. O just shared with us? What if you come up with a few different leads and then you can see which one sounds better?” Savannah hands McKenzie her post it note with her ideas for different leads. “So, I’ll try to write a lead that begins with dialogue—I hadn’t thought about that. Thanks, Savannah. OK, so I know what I need to work on, why don’t you share with me your piece and we can see what you need to work on to make your piece better,” McKenzie suggests. Savannah needs help with creating a catchy title for her personal piece. McKenzie makes several suggestions and even tells Savannah that she should look at the titles of picture books that are in the class library to get some ideas. Savannah shakes her head and thanks McKenzie. McKenzie thanks Savannah and heads to her desk to work on crafting various leads. Savannah heads to the class library to get some ideas for a title for her writing piece. This brief conference between McKenzie and Savannah lasted less than 15 minutes. Both girls agreed to come back together that day to discuss the changes they made to their writing pieces.
Conclusion
My goal for students is to ultimately develop a lifelong passion for writing. Peer conferencing is not something that can be taught in a single lesson. Just like the writing process, conferencing is a process that a writer must experience over and over again in order to master the concept. “The writing conference is one of the most valuable teaching strategies in the process-oriented classroom, because it helps the writer to think through the piece at hand. The writing conference is not meant to create a dependency. Its goal is to help young writers think about the issues any writer must consider during writing. Writing conferences help writers focus on what they have written and talk through ways the writing can be improved” (Thomason, 1998).
Through this process, my students begin:
- To become independent thinkers.
- To develop a passion for writing.
- To think and talk like writers.
- To work cooperatively in groups.
- To respect other students and their writing styles.
- To understand the writing process in depth.
- To become self reflectors.
- To self critique their own writing.
- To ask questions about their writing.
- To take risks in writing.
- To develop creativity and self empowerment.
- To understand the structure and guidelines of the writer’s workshop.
- To give constructive feedback to their peers during peer conferences.
- To enhance their writing skills through peer conferencing and communication.
In addition, Hoyt (1999) suggests, “…When children are supported in a learning environment that encourages discussion and thoughtful reflection, they begin to expect that level of thinking from themselves” (p. 11).
A quote from Thomason (1998) sums it up perfectly, “And what can you expect in your classroom as conferencing gradually becomes a part of your routine? You can expect your classroom to become a community of writers. You can expect students to take writing seriously because they will realize that its purpose is to communicate meaning with an audience. You can expect your students to mature at writers because they will have spent time discussing their own writing and gaining insight into their own composing processes. And you can expect to enjoy your interaction with your young authors more than ever before” (p. 65). If you are doing this right, then you will see your students begin to spread their wings and fly right before your very eyes. What is better than seeing this unfold in your classroom?
References
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Kirby, D. (2004). Inside Out, Strategies for Teaching Writing. Portsmouth, NH:
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Lane, B. (1993). After the End. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
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Vygotsky, L.S. (1978). Mind in Society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
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Appendix A
- Blank Writer’s Toolbox (Donna Stottman)
- Filled in Writer’s Toolbox
About the Author
Laurel Oskins
4th Grade Teacher
Louisville, KY