Ch. 14, 15, and 17

These three chapters about conferring, sharing, and assessment were very interesting to read. I had seen what my mentor considered good conferencing, good sharing, and good assessment so I thought it would be interesting to see how it lined up with what the author considered good conferring, sharing, and assessment.

I like how the author broke a good conference down into four parts. The first part is research and I really liked how she not only read their writing to see where they were, but she also asked them questions about how they thought their writing was going. I had never heard of asking the student to describe how writing was going, so I thought that was a really cool way to hear what the students are thinking. I also liked her idea of keeping a record. When I saw writing workshop in the classroom my teacher always had trouble keeping up with where everyone was in the writing process. By keeping records about what happened at a conference then you help to eliminate this problem.

When I saw the title of the sharing chapter my first thought was great a whole chapter about sitting in a circle and having students share what they wrote. I had no idea how the author could write a whole chapter about sharing. But after reading it I was pleasantly surprised. She presented many ideas and different ways to have students share their work, besides the typical whole class share.

I liked the chapter on assessment because it presented an interesting way to assess that was unlike my experience with assessment in writing workshop. In the classroom I was in there was a grade wide rubric with different standards on it to assess the children's writing. I liked the author's ideas much better and hope to use them when I assess my future student's writing.