Encouraging Effective Peer Conferencing

1. Encouraging Effective Peer Conferencing Things to Think About Aija Simmons msaija30@gmail.com

2. Time • Initially conferences go quickly however as students get used to talking and have longer drafts time will need to be adjusted • Block out a long enough time from the beginning to accommodate longer conferences • Mini lesson or model/ conferencing/ debrief • Shorten the mini lesson and debrief as students get better

3. Time Keeping • Train students to use a self monitoring system for conferences • Allow students to decide when to change partners • Provide training for what partners should do when they finish conferencing before the other students • Immediate revision is encouraged

4. Practice • It takes time (lots of it) • Students will need encouragement not to give up • It is helpful to join conferences with a short piece of your own writing • Training on interviewing or talk show hosting during occasional community building activities are helpful • Playing talk show and hosting an author who just published a book is a fun way to get students to practice engaging in conversation about another classmate’s writing

5. Community • Think early about the kind of writing community you desire • Build in opportunities across the curriculum that will support the kind of discourse you would like to see during conferencing • Initially it may be helpful for students to choose their own conferencing partner it eases tension around sharing and critique • Encourage sharing and talking throughout every stage of the writing

6. Posture • Set up very clear procedures for what materials students should have and how you expect their bodies to look during conferencing • Knee to knee/ face to face/ elbow to elbow etc • Procedure for determining who goes first

8. Modeling • Teacher led one on one • Teacher led whole class w debrief • Teacher as student • Students fish bowl

9. Mini lesson Ideas • How to get my partner to elaborate • The information of a question • What do I do with the positive comment • How do I ask a question about my own writing…what do I want to know • Add more detail….Is that helpful • What if I don’t get the point • If were just talking about the event and not the writing are we on task • Do we have to use these words • A reader’s eye ……..

10. Accountability • Students need some form of accountability • Students turn in conference sheets along with drafts and pre-writes • A simple conferencing rubric for self monitoring may also be helpful