Christina Duvall: November blog post, conferencing

Conferencing is very beneficial and eye opening. In first grade students are still recognizing sight words and decoding new words all the while trying to make meaning of what they've read.  Though ideal, I do not get to each student weekly and instead try to incorporate conferences into my guided reading group, catch a few students each morning during silent reading time, or conference with students who would like to take an AR test but need extra assistance because they may not be getting the help at home.

Last week I introduced, to my high group, a new text called The Wheat We Eat by Allan Fowler. We are finishing up our plant unit before Thanksgiving and the book allows students to make personal connections. At the same time, it's a very vocabulary rich book, so we spent some time as a group discussing new words and using sentence structure an illustrations to determine meaning. I had recently adjusted my reading groups and had moved a new student into this high group. I figured it'd be an ideal time to conference with him to ensure the group was a good fit and the reading text not too difficult. I had this student read a few pages to me. He was reading a page where, in the past, oxen helped to plow the fields before wheat was grown. He read the word "oxen" as "oxygen." This simple mistake told me alot about his reading, First, that he was mainly relying on visual cues, as those words resemble each other. I also noticed that he did not correct himself when the word "oxygen" sounded out of place in the sentence. We had discussed the word "oxen" the day before when we first met, so he also wasn't attending to the pictures to help him correct the word. This particular student, while very bright, has difficulty listening and can often be impulsive when doing school work, making meaning from reading, etc. From this conferencing scenario I realized that while this student does, for the time being, belong in this reading group, he will need more time reviewing vocabulary (for retention) and I will also have to think of some more creative strategies to help him use pictures in the text to connect with meaning (maybe a visual cue card of sorts) and better listen to himself read. I was impressed though not surprised that the word "oxygen" was in his vocabulary.

I also chose In the Forest to read with my low reading group. It is a book about animals in the forest and their habits (rabbits eating grass, bears eating berries, etc). It is a very patterned text.  Several -ing words were in this story so as a group we studied those prior to reading and discussed what -ing does to a word. I then conferenced with one of my struggling readers on this book. She has tons of prior knowledge and a rich vocabulary and appears very bright. However she really struggles to decode words. Yet, she read the book beautifully to me, with very few errors; comprehension spot on. The patterned text and illustrations really helped her. The next day I decided to see if the students could read 8 words from the text in isolation to me. This student missed 6 of the 8 words. It was very eye opening for me to see how much a patterned text with familiar elements (forest animals) could allow much success, yet the carry over of those skills was very limited. This helped inform my instruction in that while a patterned text can build confidence for a struggling reader, decoding practices still need to be taught for this group very heavily. It reminded me alot of a toddler or a preschooler "reading" Eric Carle's Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? from memory.

While my guided reading group conferences are on books I've chosen for my reading groups, I still conference with students on books of their choice outside of reading groups as well. This allows me to see how much they have read the book prior to my meeting with them, if it is an appropriate book linked to their reading ability, and then the strategies they use to make meaning from the text.