Blog Post 4-
November
Conferencing
with Focus Group
Molly Peake
For my
formative data with Kidwatching I conferenced with my 6 students on a journal
entry that he/she had written. Students
were given the task of writing on what a real hero is and comparing a real hero to a fake
hero. Students also had to include in
their writing a hero in their own personal life.
The conference focus was on opening and closing sentences, detail
sentences, punctuation, capitalization, and proper use of grammar. Much to my surprise, my third graders are
still struggling with capitalization and punctuation. It should come as no surprise because this
seems to be a skill that students so easily “forget” when writing.
I took
advantage of my conference time to conduct individual mini-lessons with these
students and really focused on the skills of capitalization of proper nouns and
punctuation. After conferencing with the
students about their opening paragraphs I gave students the opportunity to
self-correct and revise his/her second paragraph. I was pleased that the mini-lesson carried
over into the revisions made in students' second paragraphs. Now it is my only hope that the next time
these particular students journal that this conference and mini-lesson sticks and
that a new focus can be addressed in the next conference time.
Molly, it appears you learned a lot about your students through your conversations with them. The mini-lessons you provided in this one on one setting also seemed to help guide your kids in the right direction. Your forward thinking focus is also spot on. Next time you conference with these kids, it'll be interesting if they've internalized the lesson and made necessary revisions to their journal entries.
ReplyDeleteHi Molly,
ReplyDeleteI loved reading about how you are using conferencing in your writing workshop to help grow your students' writing and to help strengthen the as writers. I know you hope that the time invested into each conference with each student pays off and I want to tell you that the odds are in your favor because when we provide students with targeted feedback and opportunities to apply the suggestions within the context of authentic independent reading and writing studies show students grow. Sincerely, Dawn