It has been so exciting having the opportunity and flexibility to have a workshop model in my classroom this year. While in previous years I had components of workshop I never felt like I could consider it a true workshop because of various factors that limited my ability to have the full structure. One of my common themes that I have mentioned multiple times this year is that it is always a great feeling to be able to implement ideas that I have read about. However, as with anything new, I have a lot to adjust and improve. After working out some of the initial kinks, conferring is my current largest area of focus. That is why I was so excited for the release of Patrick Allen’s Conferring: The Keystone of Reader’s Workshop. I had already read general ideas about reading and writing conferences, but I was ready for books specifically addressing conferring in each area to deepen my knowledge in the area. Reading Allen’s book fulfilled that need, and I feel much more confident and capable to successfully confer with intention in my classroom. As I read, I realized that I have already started doing some of his suggestions; however, I had stumbled upon them and now I have a stronger sense of why and how to do it even better. Allen talked a lot about walk-aways, learning teachers/students walk away with after conferences. In the spirit of this concept I will be doing a series of posts on my personal walk-aways from the book, ways that I will be a better teacher and conferrer because of Conferring: The Keystone of Reader’s Workshop. However, my posts will just be a glimpse into all that I took away from the book because in doing initial reflecting on walk-aways I could include the list was getting pretty long and many of the topics had many sub areas to develop.
No comments:
Post a Comment