Effective Conferences: Student Engagement in Writing and LearningHiram College WAC

Adapted from Murray, Newkirk, Raforth, Glenn and Goldthwaite et. al.

Why Conferences?

• “I used to mark up every student paper diligently. How much I hoped my colleagues would see how carefully I marked my student papers. I alone held the bridge against the pagan hordes. No one escaped the blow of my "awk." And then one Sunday afternoon a devil bounded to the arm of my chair. I started giving purposefully bad counsel on my students' papers to see what would happen. "Do this backward," "add adjectives and adverbs," "be general and abstract," "edit with a purple pencil," "you don't mean black you mean white." Not one student questioned my comments..” -- Donald Murray

The Conference Process• Pre-conference: • Develop a plan (or plans) for the session• Be ready to scrap the plan

• Conference• Break the ice (Intrusive advising opportunity)• Ask questions• Draw a map of the session • Balance the teacher directive with the student directive• Help student build conclusions or action plan:

• What should they do next? • What steps can they follow to achieve those goals?

• Wrap up (Intrusive advising opportunity)• Post-Conference:• What issues did you work on in conference?• If patterns emerged, what can you address effectively to the entire class? In

peer group workshops?

Pre-conference: • Develop a plan (or plans) for the session• Discussion of a plan or draft of a new assignment• Discussion of the content or structural revisions of a draft in

progress• Discussion of the progress of any long-term ongoing project

(a research essay, for instance)• Discussion of a process, particularly changes in a student’s

writing process, and the sharing of anecdotes about writing (since you, the teacher, are a writer, too, with your own blocks, ruts, successes)

• Discussion of activities meant to deal with specific and identified patterns of formal problems: syntactic errors, verb endings, and the like.

-- (Glenn and Goldthwaite 76)

Pre-Conference

•Vary plan for students who need a different approach•Prepare necessary materials:•Assignment sheet•Hacker guide•Key readings•Be ready to scrap the plan

In Conference

•Break the ice• Before you get into the discussion of

the essay or work in the class, you may want to ask general questions about how the student is doing in general. • If they express concerns, don’t be

afraid to move directly into Intrusive Advising.

In Conference• Ask questions:• What did you learn from this piece of writing?• What do you intend to do in the next draft?• What surprised you in the draft?• Where is the piece of writing taking you? • What do you like best in the piece of writing? • What questions do you have of me?

• (Murray 15)• Once you have established what the student needs from the

conference, you may want to map out how you will spend time in the session: “We’ll look at your introduction first, and then we might help you work on organization. Sound good?”

In Conference• Balance the teacher directive with the student directive• Ask questions and listen (at most 50% of you talking)• Help the student to hear their “Internal editor.” Is the

student making decisions just by asking you questions about their essay?

• Help student build conclusions or action plan:• What should they do next? • Ask students to write down what they plan on doing.

Make them start to make changes as you sit with them. • What steps can they follow to achieve those goals?• When do they plan to make the changes? When will

they work on the essay? • Should they plan a visit to the Writing Center?

Intrusive Advising• Possible questions to ask the student:• What did they not expect from these first few weeks of

college? What surprised them? • What are they most proud of in their first few weeks of

college? • What have they been telling their parents about their

college experience? What have they not told their parents?

• Help student respond to issues by making a plan. • What can the student do to help address their own

issues? • What resources does the college have for the student?

Post Conference• What issues did you work on in conference?• If patterns emerged in the class, what can you address

effectively to the entire class? In peer group workshops? • Take notes on each student. • What were the expected outcomes? What did you ask

students to do? What kinds of checks can you perform to measure student outcomes?

• Contact those who need to know about the student:• Mapworks alerts and messages• Other faculty members• Coaches• Other contacts as needed.

Resources• Cheryl Glenn and Melissa Goldthwaite. The St. Martin’s Guide

to Teaching Writing. 6th ed. New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2008.

• Donald McAndrew and Thomas Reigstad. Tutoring Writing: A Practical Guide for Conferences. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton-Cook, 2001.

• William J. Macauley. “Setting the Agenda for the Next 30 Minutes.” A Tutor’s Guide: Helping Writers One to One. Ed. Ben Raforth. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton-Cook, 2000. 1-8.

• Donald Murray. “The Listening Eye: Reflections on the Writing Conference.” College English 41.1 (Sept. 1979): 13-18.