Writing Conferences

Writing conferences give students a chance to sit down in a one-on-one session with their teacher to explain their reasoning, ask questions, or clarify any misunderstandings or missing information before a piece of writing is due. Students are then able to revise their writing with confidence. Each conference can last anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes, and a teacher may be able to get one-on-one time with all his or her students in about a week (Hinchman & Sheridan-Thomas, 2014). Below are links to some resource guides to use when constructing a writing conference.

Resource Links

5-Minute Writing Conferences, from Edutopia (link to webpage)
Writing Conference Question Guide and Peer Response Guide (link to pdf)

Peer review

Peer reviewing is an excellent way to help students understand where their strengths and weakness are in their essay writing as well as where they should focus most when they go back to edit. One way to do this is to assign students to peer review one of their classmates’ essays and exchange them at the end of the class. Students should first be taught how to peer edit and what to look for before they “grade” their classmates’ work, and peer review days should come before students are to self-edit their own papers. This way, all students have a better idea of what to edit and the reasons why. A good way to introduce peer reviewing is to have the entire class review the same example essay. Students may have a checklist beside them and review the essay independently before participating in a teacher-led discussion on why parts of the essay were satisfactory or not. Below are some rubrics and peer edit questions to use when planning peer-edit days.

resource links

Peer Revision Checklist with a Final Essay Rubric (link to pdf)
Peer Review Questions to Consider (link to webpage)
Peer Review Checklist for Informative Essay (link to pdf)