Our conferring used to consist of in-depth conversations with students which focused on their family, their feelings about reading, elements of story grammar, and good summaries. We believed that in order to have a meaningful conference we had to have first-hand knowledge of the text so we could hold them accountable for really reading, and not, as Cris Tovani coined, "Fake Reading." We were, to some degree, the reading police.

Subtly over time our conferences took on the roll of support and were filled with questions like, "How can I help you?" Now we liken them to coaching. We watch and listen to the child reading, model, teach and reinforce one or two strategies, after which the student tries them out and then goes off to practice on their own. Because we want our conferences to be focused and purposeful, we developed this simple, yet effective conferring form. It allows us to focus our conferring/coaching on the child's assessment based goals and pinpoints what their next steps are.

This form is initially filled out during an assessment conference with the child and reflects our newest thinking, which is to record their strengths as a reader, as well as their goal.

This revelation came when we attended an IRA conference in Toronto and found ourselves standing next to Donald Graves while waiting to get into Richard Allington's session. We were feeling a little giddy and starstruck and wanted to fill the silence, yet sound intelligent, so we asked him, "Donald, what are you working on and thinking about now?"

He said he was spending time with the notion that as teachers we are in this busy frenzy to identify student's deficits, so much so that we may be neglecting the rest of the child, failing to recognize their strengths and all the things they do know. Shouldn't their strengths be part of the conversation with the child as well?

We almost did a Starbucks spit take, knowing our conferring forms only had goals and strategies identified and nowhere did we record strengths or what the children did have command over. We verbally shared them, yet we all know, what is written is most valued and remembered. We returned to Seattle and immediately changed our conferring form to the one you'll see here.

If you want a scaffold for your conferences and how we fill out this form, check out the conference sample sheet below.

Conferring Sample Chart