Recipe for Culinary Conferencing

Cook time:  2-7 minutes

Temperature: Cool and comfortable classroom

Serves: Approximately 22 hungry minds

Ingredients:

1 Teacher

1 Student

1 Piece of Writing

2 Somewhere’s to Sit

A fistful of knowledge (pg 164)

Record Keeping Materials

Directions:

Preparation time: At least one class period for writing for child. Teacher should sift one fistful of knowledge down to deliberate teaching idea, use only freshest ingredients

Combine teacher and student with one piece of writing at 2 somewhere’s to sit. Allow to simmer to low boil (ideas).

Increase heat to direct instruction mode, stir occasionally with open ended questions for student.

Occasionally monitor reason for teaching objective.

Serve hot to friends and family, no holding back!!!

"I don't want my body to be a distraction from my talent or my brain." ~Shania Twain

  


      Distractions, we know as teachers that our students will face so many distractions during a school day, because lets face it, so will we. The way we handle these distractions is what makes us or breaks us. Ray does a great job of reassuring me with ways to handle distractions during Writing Workshop. One thing Ray said that really struck me is that we need to have faith in our students to stay engaged while working for longer periods of time. She brings up the fact that when students are all working on a uniformed task like a worksheet, we never second guess if they are staying on task but we do when we allow them to have the freedom to choose what interests them. Why is this? Shouldn't the opposite be true? Again, I think it goes back to having faith that our students want to learn and that they are interested in things and are willing to explore and put in the time.
     One key ingredient to having a successful Writing Workshop is the space that you allow your students to use. I can remember back when I was in elementary school I can remember teachers having lofts in their classrooms and how exciting it was to get to use them to do your work. So having these experiences makes me appreciate the use of different classroom spaces. At the same time I am nervous about using couches or bean bags in my classroom because how can we fairly determine when and what students get to use them? Ray brings up a great point by saying that you could let the students themselves set up some sort of system to determine who works best in what spots and what type of rotation schedule will be used.
     Chapter 8 scared me a little. Writing Workshops will indeed be hectic and challenging. The key is to have them planned out enough to understand how to deal with them when they veer in a different direction then what was originally planned. I love how Ray talks about how terrible Writing Workshop "kits" are. Isn't the great thing about Writing Workshops the freedom to choose what you want to write about, so by using kits we are secretly limiting our students to what WE want them to write about. Again, bringing this time meant for them back to meet Our standards as well as the schools. There are ways to have students follow what you would like them to do, but simply letting students pick from a few topics is not the way. "Kits" are an easy way out and as teachers it's not our job to short our students just because it takes less effort on our part.

Conferencing

     The dreaded student teacher interaction. When I think back to my experiences with conferencing, I remember my teachers telling me what I needed to work on, making me feel inadequate. This is not the type of conferencing that Ray discusses. This should be a productive and useful tool for both teacher and student. Its an open ended conversation for the teacher to find out where students strengths are and what needs work, not simply by telling students what they are doing wrong but by prompting questions so that students can evaluate their own work. I think that this is the key to holding a successful conference. Also, Ray puts such an importance upon conferencing that the students really respect it. Ray mentions how important the way we ask questions can be. Even a small change of a sentence can change a one worded answer into an explanation. Going even further in depth, Ray attempts to help teach us, wanna be teachers, how to and how important the right question is. I feel as if I have never had an issue with posing meaningful questions that expect insightful comments but it is nice to have a few guide lines to fall back on.