Speaking and listening, reading and viewing, writing
Bands A, B, C, D

What is it?

Conferencing is about purposeful talking and listening. It may be one to one or in small groups, and the participants may be teacher and student(s), teacher, parent(s) and student or students and students. It is about supporting and collaborating, guiding and monitoring and commenting and reflecting on student progress. It may be used to foster students’ learning in any of the language modes, but most often reading and writing. It can be a highly structured process in which the student and the teacher keep a written record over time, or it may be an informal process applied incidentally as required. It may occur before, during or after reading/viewing, speaking/listening, or writing.

What is its purpose?

• It allows teachers and students to talk about the texts that are being read or crafted in a constructive manner
• It provides immediate feedback on refining and extending work
• It is an invaluable source of information in monitoring student progress over time
• It can identify gaps in understanding
• It provides positive feedback for student successes.
• It establishes a supportive framework for problem solving by students and their peers
• It can be used for information sharing
• The teacher can use it for direct intervention and explicit teaching of aspects of a process
• It is a vehicle for explicit teaching and modelling of active listening skills
• It caters for and supports the range of abilities within a classroom

How do I do it?

Reading conference

• individual or small group
• regular and timetabled or incidental
• attends to a range of purposes such as skills based instruction, recommendations for further reading, opportunities to talk about and celebrate particular texts/genres, and evaluation of individual progress, with the aim of setting further goals
• Uses a range of questioning techniques
• Shares and values a range of viewpoints and readings of texts
• Uses a range of record keeping by the teacher and/or the student

In Read On: A Conference Approach to Reading, David Hornsby and others has some very useful suggestions to prepare students who are new to the conferencing process:

• Complete a written comment to bring to the conference
• Draw a picture of the main character or the setting
• Bring a list of important characters
• Bring their books with bookmarks inserted, indicating a part they want to share
• Discuss the appropriateness of chapter headings
• Comment on the use of illustrations
• Bring a list of major events and the settings in which they occurred.

Writing conference

• Focuses on the student’s own writing
• Values the process of writing
• Can happen before, during or after the writing process
• May be individual or small group
• May be for one piece of writing or a portfolio of writing
• Is explicit in identifying strengths and weaknesses of the writing and how improvements can be made, taking into consideration the form, purpose and audience of the text
• By talking, teachers give students the tools and the language to reflect on their own and other students’ writing:

Is there enough detail provided to make time and place settings clear?

Is it clear who the participants are, and what their relationships are to each other?

Is the sequence of events clear?

Is it clear what the research topic is about?

Is there enough information in the text?

How are you going to organise the information?

(from Writing for Life, p93)

• reinforces the processes of planning, drafting, editing and publishing writing

Peer conference

• By placing the responsibility of the process in the hands of the students there are a number of benefits such as engagement of the students in their own learning, freeing up the teacher to attend to those writers most in need, generating ideas for the conference partners for their own writing, creating a climate of a writing community

• Students require explicit teaching on how to conference each other

Rules for conferences

1. The writer may read the piece aloud, or give it to the partner to read, whichever the writer prefers.
2. When the partner has heard or read the piece, s/he must

• ask at least one question
• make at least one comment

A good conference partner tries to help the writer decide on the focus or key idea of the piece.

1. The writer has the right to choose not to answer questions.
2. If a piece is being prepared for a teacher conference, both the partner and the writer must fill in and sign the conference slip.

(When it’s fun you learn, p30)

Three-Way Conference

An ideal way to use conferencing is in the assessment and reporting process. Students own this process by being given joint control over the ‘parent/teacher’ interview:

A snapshot of the three-way conferencing process

1. The teacher and students prepare for the forthcoming conferences. This includes building rapport with parents, sharing evidence of learning, and sharing students’ reflections about their work.
2. The teacher helps parents prepare for the conference by sending home letters that outline the conference format.
3. Before each conference, the student and parents spend time reviewing the child’s collection of work and viewing the different learning areas in the classroom.
4. The students, parents, and teacher then meet in the classroom conference area. The student leads the discussion about what he or she has learned, what areas he or she needs to improve upon, and what his or her learning goals are for next term.
5. Learning goals, proposed by the student in cooperation with his or her teacher, are agreed upon. The child states what he or she is going to do to achieve each goal, and both the teacher and parents commit to providing specific support.
6. The teacher keeps a record of the discussion during the conference and ensures that the conference runs smoothly by helping the student address all the relevant issues and by helping to answer parent questions.

(from Together Is Better, p26.)

How can I find out more?

John Collerson (ed.) (1988) Writing for Life Primary English Teaching Association

Anne Davies, Caren Cameron, Colleen Politano, Kathleen Gregory (1992) Together is Better Collaborative Assessment, Evaluation & Reporting

Eleanor Curtain, South Yarra

Bill Harp (1993) Bringing Children to Literacy: Classrooms at Work Christopher-Gordon

David Hornsby and Deborah Sukarna with Jo-Ann Parry (1986) Read On: A Conference Approach To Reading Horwitz Grahame

Brian Johnston (1987) Assessing English: Helping Students to Reflect on Their Work Open University Press

Ruth Nathan, Frances Temple, Kathleen Juntunen, Charles Temple (1989) Classroom Strategies That Work: An Elementary Teacher’s Guide to Process Writing Heinemann

Janet Rickwood and Jenni Satrapa (1989) When it’s fun you learn. Organising for learning in the secondary English classroom, A.A.T.E.