The Four Writing Conferences

The assessments have been done during and after the lesson in a variety of ways; verbal response, written response, pair and group work, and making posters as a visual outcome.

While attending writing class, I learned about the 4 steps in writing, bases for revising, organizing, and connecting specific information, and I also learned about the different types of essays such as descriptive, narrative, process, cause and effect and argumentative essay. I have been a student at Milwaukee Area Technical College for 1 semester, and over the course of my enrollment I have grown and learned more that I knew prior to attending this writing course. Participating in this writing class has taught me so much more than stuff about literature and language, it has taught me another way of expressing myself. I have learned here how to write and express myself, how to think for myself, and how to find the answers to the things that I don 't know. Most importantly I have learned how important technique, outlines and organization are. My goal in this paper is to inform writers about how my writing skills have improved.

Communication in writing skills for the past six weeks were standards information on different sorts of sources for rapidly flowing needs of today’s writers. This form of writing shows the role of strategies in writing on subjects. It demonstrated contracts between oral communication and written communication. The main ideas in this course discovery, objectives, critical thinking, and tension, valuing course resources time management, and cooperating with others (Giordano 2012). However, the skills for effective writing produce volumes of master’s level for the required resources in this way.

Murray is insightful not only to instructors but also to learners. Murray argues that the challenge facing writing is the fact that teachers have treated it as a product rather than a process and the same concept passed on to students. The author holds that the main problem with this view is that students get to receive irrelevant criticisms that are not related to their learning goals. While I tend to agree with the author based on the arguments presented, it is notable that Murray has paid little attention to the idea of education in the contemporary world. In most learning institutions, the outcome of the writing is considered more than the process. As a teacher paying attention to the process of writing but not be consistent with the students, who are mostly driven by

Assessment needs to be an ongoing, integral part of the teaching and learning cycle. It must allow teachers and students themselves to monitor learning. From the teacher

Ch. 2 – Who are the various users of assessment and its results? What specific instructional decisions can be made based on assessment results? Why must we build balanced assessment systems to support the instructional programs we offer students? This chapter nails down the purpose of assessing, which is gathering information to inform teachers of students of their instruction and learning, respectively. In this way, assessment is individualized to each student and classroom, and because all students/classes are different, it should inform the teachers of what is working or not working in the classroom, which should then influence some sort of change to instruction. This chapter also talks about the different levels of assessment – from the individuals

Teachers use formative, summative, and informal assessments to determine whether learning has taken place. An assessment can be done before, during and at the end of a unit. Teachers use the data collected from the performance of students to set instructional goals

Students are instructed on how to develop and organize their writing by developing a plan or out line to follow. Teachers should discuss with their students how to effectively plan out their writing strategy. Students need to be taught to question themselves about the purpose of their writing. Questions like; “Who am I writing for?” or “How will I organize my thoughts?” are two general examples. Gersten mentions the importance and purpose of the first draft and how it provides a concrete reminder for where the writing is going. The plan and its draft provide a common language for teacher and students to share making communication easier. He also speaks of the strengths of the revision process. Gersten illustrates how peer-editing can be a useful tool to employ during writing.

The author Calkins explained about Donald Murray’s process which consists on rehearsal, drafting, revision and editing. According to Calkins, most of the writers follow this cycle. Calkins interviewed many writers and each of them explained that none of them sit and immediately start writing. The stage of rehearsal is a state of readiness out which one writes Calkins explains. As teachers, it is important we write often to pass this habit to our students. Writing can be done in a personal notebook, often called journals. Calkins explains that teaching students to write often in a journal is important because it is a place of rehearsal and these ideas are seeds of great writing. Sadly, many students are not encouraged to write, therefore, they do not have the eye of a writer. An important goal for teachers is to “fill their students with a sense of so much to say and life of full possible stories.” For example, Calkins wrote about a teacher who had a ritual in her class. This ritual consisted of writing in their own personalized notebooks. By doing this, students were encouraged to write whatever they thought was important for

Logan Pearsall Smith once said, “Fine writers should split hairs together, and sit side by side, like friendly apes, to pick the fleas from each other’s fur.” All be it an overwhelmingly disgusting image, Smith’s words are true when it comes the art and science of putting pencil to paper. In the classroom, students should be able to be vulnerable, honest, accountable and “real” in their writing so that they may grow to become better writers. It is the responsibility of the teacher to insure a quality learning environment that is conducive to these three factors. Observing the writing process and identifying the experiences within, be them personal, direct or indirect, contribute to how the educator teaches students using best practices.

Classroom assessment involves the professional decision of the teacher to determine how to implement assessment, what should be assessed, and when should assessment occur. Teachers must be able to interpret each students’ unique learning abilities in ways that are credible, fair, and free from bias. Possible factors to consider when creating these multiple formats for assessments include gender, ethnicity, culture, socio-economic backgrounds, and special needs. Each and every student in the classroom should be give the same opportunity to display their strengths. And it is important for teachers to properly manage an assessment plan that will benefit students, as well as the teachers, in the classroom. Eventually, a well-constructed assessment plan will be able to contribute to the development of lifelong learners within the teacher and the students.

The article “Thank You for Sharing: Developing Students’ Social Skills to Improve Peer Writing Conferences” by Keri Franklin describes Franklin’s experience during a training session with a cooperative learning expert. During the article, Franklin explained how she realized that her workshop sessions were not going as well as she thought they were going and how she wanted to improve her sessions. It was only within reading the first few sentences that I realized that this was a great article for me to read while I lead this workshop for this semester. Unfortunately, not unlike Franklin, my workshop had not been going well. “I needed to help students identify appropriate behaviors used in everyday social skills and used in effective peer conferences” (Franklin 79). This quote spoke to me as I thought of my workshop and how it has gone so far. As well as having two students in my workshop that are from another country and English is their second language, I also had students who did not grasp the basic concept of writing and using the English language in its proper form.This article helped me realize that I have a lot

As my students get the opportunity of analysing and reviewing my writing in the shared writing process, they learn to critique their own work by reflecting and evaluating their own writing. I implement the research supported six traits of writing in my classroom to teach and model out quality writing (Spandel, 2005, p. ix). For example, the ideas for writing, sentence organisation, word choice, conventions, sentence fluency and voice (Spandel, 2005, p. ix). Additionally, I provide scaffolded instruction, prompts and suggestions to encourage them to think critically and self-reflect and improve their writing.

Conferring is describe as discussing something important in order to make a decision. The writing conference is a one-on-one strategy that takes place between the student and the teacher. Conferring is one of the best opportunity for direct and immediate teaching of the skills that are involved in writing. In addition to these steps you are also teaching your student the writing process and good quality writing. The writing process it the main focuses of the conference. Conferencing lies at the heart of effective writing instruction because writing, unlike any other subjects, do not have a correct answer. (Klein, 2011) An example of writing is like playing a sport because you have to put a variety of skills together to hit the target. (Klein, 2011) As teachers, we are like the coach of the sport we demonstrate the rules of the game and guide our students in strengthening their performance. In addition, we also offers personalized advice to help each child improve by giving them individualized feedback that will improve their learning. (Klein, 2011)

What are your thoughts on implementing writing conferences in your classroom? I think it’s a good idea to implement writing conference because it is very useful and helpful for both the teacher and students. The writing conference give the students the opportunity to work in a small group or even in peers, and most importantly the teacher is there to help them along the way if the get stuck on something. While I was watching the video I realize that the students were so happy and excited to talk about what they were thinking, they were opening up, and they would say what comes to mind, and they were not shy. I like the fact that the students are the ones writing their stories with a little help from their teachers of course, but they decide