In a writing workshop community, there is not just one teacher in the room. All writers think, write, react, and share. Student writers can be helpful advisers to their fellow writers early in the year, but they do need modeling, as well as practice. Students must receive quick feedback. They must reflect on where they have been, where they presently are, and where they are headed in their writing goals. How do we help our student writers become helpful conferrers? First, we offer them a process for success by modeling what a successful conference looks and sounds like. For young writers, we begin with read, retell, respond. The notice (praise), question, polish format is useful for second through middle school grades.
Teachers can provide some guidance for peer conferences by modeling with these techniques. Use a Fishbowl Model – call in a student-teacher or another grade level teacher to help you and model a peer conference with students sitting around you in a large circle. Give the students some language frames such as “Tell me more…” You may want to create an anchor chart with starter phrases for conferences. Make sure that students understand their conferences are based on generating ideas, craft, or process rather than corrections. Peer conferences should be in the hands of the writer: the writer decides when to confer with a peer and why to confer with a peer.
In Brenda Krupp’s third-grade classroom, the students created this anchor chart with their teacher to “cheer” and “challenge” each other during peer and small-group conferences and posted it on a bulletin board for all to see:
What can we notice?
- We notice a sharp focus—the writer did not stray from his intended path.
- We notice elaboration, the details—the writer offers examples, descriptions, explanations.
- We notice organizational scaffolds—use of transition words, strong leads, effective endings.
- We notice word choice—exact nouns, strong verbs, use of imagery.
- We notice sentence fluency—varying lengths and patterns.
- We praise effective punctuation.
What can we question?
- Ask for more information to remove ambiguity or generalizations.
- Ask the direction of the piece—where is the reader headed?—if the focus isn’t sharp.
- Ask the writer to tell you what the most important part of the piece is (helps to clear up focus issues).
- Ask for examples or explanations to make the details clearer.
- Ask for a definition of an unfamiliar term.
- Ask for emotions when there is no evidence by telling or showing.
- Ask how the writer is planning to end the piece if it doesn’t already have one.
What can we polish?
- Concentrate on word choice (strong nouns and verbs).
- Sentence fluency—a variety of long and short sentences that begin different ways, suggesting sentence combining when appropriate.
- What can we add or change to give this piece voice or to make this piece sound like the writer?
- Add description— to appeal to the senses—a piece is usually better when two senses are used than only one (such as sight).
- Use of transitional devices and organizational scaffolds (When I was young in the mountains . . .).
- Literary devices—similes, metaphors, personification, hyperbole, alliteration.
Students may use a conference clock to sign up for one or more peer conferences.These conferences may take about 8 minutes in the beginning of the year with 2 minutes to change to the next conference and get started. Students may sit at desks, at a larger table, on the carpeted area for whole-group instruction, or anywhere in the room. Sometimes, there are couches or chairs or carpet squares to sit on. Students travel with their writer’s notebook or their draft – usually attached to a plastic clipboard to make revision work easier to do. They also have sticky notes to offer praise and polish to their peer conferrer. The last quadrant is reserved for ideas to share during whole-group reflection. These may be praises or polishes.
Peer conferences can occur in small chat rooms during a Zoom meeting with your class. Or some peer partners can volunteer to share writing pieces in a virtual peer conference their classmates can view. For older students, you may want to experiment with Peergrade, a free online platform to facilitate peer feedback sessions with students. In the whole-group share during a Zoom meeting or google classroom meeting, ask students to decide what they want to share from their peer conference ahead of time: an unexpected praise that someone gave you, something you did not know you did, a polish that you will use, a suggestion you gave to a peer, a revision or edit you made because of a peer suggestion.
As you observe your student during peer conferences and listen to the writerly talk during the final reflection, you might want to consider these questions to help you assess your students’ needs and growth.
- Which students are able to use their knowledge of writing traits to talk about the qualities of writing?
- Which students can be grouped together for instructional purposes?
- Which students are willing to take risks and which are not?
- What are students capable of doing independently?
- Which students are resistant to letting other people’s thinking influence their writing decisions?
Peer conferences are one of the most effective ways to grow writers. Peers have similar life experiences They are age alike – looking through the same lens as they examine and discuss a piece of writing. Peers do not have a teacher-student power relationship – they feel free to accept or not accept peer suggestions. There are more peers in the room than you! Peer conferences build a community of writers. When peers confer, they can practice the nomenclature of writers. Our student writers are not threatened by their peers’ suggestions and may use all or part of them. Peer conferences give our writers an audience on a daily basis—a chance to be recognized as a writer, to receive a few pats on the back, and support to move forward. Peer conferences are a positive, effective way to sustain the writing community and to move everyone forward.
Visit MiddleWeb for more thoughts about peer conferences and to view a great peer conference with two third graders from Brenda Krupp’s classroom.
Visit Stenhouse Publishers for A Closer Look: Learning More About Our Writers with Formative Assessment, k-6 by Lynne R. Dorfman & Diane Dougherty.
https://www.stenhouse.com/content/closer-look
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