One to One: The Art of Conferring with Young Writers

In an effective writing workshop, young children grow in leaps and bounds, and within just a few months, the changes in their written products can dazzle you. And after 30 years of studying her students' growth in the writing workshop, Lucy Calkins knows one of the most powerful ways to support good writers: clear, purposeful writing conferences.

In One to One Calkins and her colleagues Amanda Hartman and Zoe White show you the practices and principles that create effective conferences. They dispel the myth that master teachers have a magic touch and show you that effective teachers do not reinvent the conference with each student, but rather use predictable, principled interactions that follow a few simple frameworks. In One to One, you will learn:

• repeatable conferring frameworks that are the foundation of effective conferring
• specific teaching methods that you can match to your students' needs
• strategies for tailoring conferences to English language learners
• ways to use conferring across the content areas
• on-the-run record-keeping systems that are efficient, powerful teaching tools.

Good conferring, like good teaching, relies on your ability to communicate effectively with children, and the skills you develop as you learn to confer will improve your teaching abilities in all areas, including developing curriculum, leading strong minilessons, and untangling the classroom chaos that can derail a smoothly running workshop. Read One to One to improve your conferences and your teaching. But most important, read it to improve your students' writing every day.