Conferring Walk-Aways Parent/Staff Involvement

Last year our school started to have grade-level meetings throughout the year to talk to parents about specific academic areas. I am still planning out our meetings with my teaching partner for this year. Last year my parent meetings ended up being about new technology in the classroom and my students' first ever over-night field trip to visit a college. This year I want to make sure that in addition to these types of meetings I also include topics specifically related to language arts.

One of my favorite sections in Conferring was "Lingering Questions and Answers About Conferring with Readers". It concisely reviewed concepts that he had mentioned at various points in the book, as well as some new thoughts. I was particularly interested in his answer to how teachers can utilize parents and staff members. He gave many specific tips on where parents should start when conferring and what types of information they can note about their children, as well as questions they can ask. He concluded by saying, "It is important that we teach parent volunteers and support staff how to confer with readers. Knowing how to confer makes their work with students more purposeful and meaningful" (184).

I realized that Allen was probably talking about parents as volunteers, but he got me to think about how this could be a powerful parent meeting topic. Our parents who are able to often ask about how they can help their students at home. Many of the parents read and discuss books with their children. Allen's suggestions give me so many ideas on how I could provide support for parents to confer with their children if they are not already doing so. It is also a great way for them to understand our workshop model in class.

His comments also gave me new ideas on how to support my instructional assistant in conferring with readers. Earlier this year I had asked a question at Two Writing Teachers if they had suggestions for best utilizing instructional assistants in the workshop. One of them had mentioned the benefits of having them confer (I tried to find the post so I could link it but didn't). I loved the idea, but I quickly realized that since I was so new to conferring and did not have my own system down yet, it was hard to explain what I wanted my assistant to do. Now that I am getting more comfortable I am getting to a point where I can add in this piece utilizing Allen's ideas for starting points.