Topic: Conferring

Writing minilessons are a powerful tool for teachers, helping students to grow as independent writers.

The goal of our new book, How to Become a Better Writing Teacher, is to help you become really good at teaching writing.

In our forthcoming book, How to Become a Better Writing Teacher, we focus on the question of how to help teachers become good writing teachers.

Comprehension is not about spitting out facts and filling in blanks. Comprehension is about understanding. And reading is not merely about word calling. Reading is about thinking.

Student engagement is crucial for students to learn to write well. When students are engaged, they’re more likely to learn.

What if revision is something that happens in the mindset of the writer during the writing process? This is the question that Chris Hall answer in The Writer’s Mindset.

This post kicks off the PLC series. A good place to begin is with how to listen to and learn from our students.

Katie Wood Ray interviews Carl Anderson and Jenifer Serravallo, who both recently published two conferring books in Heinemann’s Classroom Essentials Series.

Conferring is built on learning what students are doing and how they are thinking. In the first stage of a math conference, the teachers looks, listens, and asks with the goal of building an interpretation of student thinking.

Feedback is key to student learning. Since writing conferences are conversations between students and teachers, they provide opportunities for two types of feedback: student to teacher, and teacher to student.

Begin conferences by asking students an open-minded question that invites them to talk about what they're doing as writers.

When you ask the question, 'How’s it going?' at the beginning of writing conferences, you’re doing much more than inviting students to talk about what they’re doing as writers. The question initiates your relationship with each student and deepens each of these relationships.

Here, Kate Roberts shares just a few extended classroom clips from her book, A Novel Approach. In this blog, you'll get a chance to watch Kate confer with two different students, and see how Kate structures a mini-less and read aloud.

Today on the podcast, Lee Heffernan discusses her new book Back and Forth: Using an Editor’s Mindset to Improve Student Writing

How to Set Up Reading Partnerships to Maximize Literacy Learning in Your Classroom

9 Types of Reading Conferences: A Jumping Off Point

Using Pre-Assessment to Ease into Reading Differentiation

Heinemann Fellow Tiana Silvas on Fostering Empathy and Understanding Among Students