Chapters 14, 15 and 17

I liked the chapter about conferencing with students, as I would never have thought about doing that during writing workshop.  Instead I would have maybe walked around and glanced at student's work and wait for them to raise their hands for help.  I liked how Katie Wood Ray talk about the four parts of conferencing: research, decide, teach, make a record.  It is a way to figure out what each student is succeeding at and what they are struggling with.  From there the teacher can help the student with what they are struggling with and help them become better writers. This also helps make sure that you are having an equal time with all the students in the class instead of just spending the most time with a certain couple of students.  The problem I am worried about is that some students are going to need more help than others so wouldn't they need conferences more often? 

I really like shared reading in the classroom, I think it is a great way for students to share with each other what they have written and helped them become more comfortable talking in front of an audience.  There are four kinds of sharing: simple response share, survey share, focused share, and student-as-teacher share.  The students in the first grade classroom I observe in do simple response share.  They will sit in a circle and read their writing and talk about things they can improve on for their final copy.  The teacher will ask them questions if they get stuck but she tries to make it a student led activity.  Lately however I have seen that the students have been doing more centers instead of the writing workshop that they were doing when I first started my observations.  The teacher had told me she was getting back on track from the snow days and therefore was implementing the centers.  The students still do some writing workshop however they do not share with each other anymore, at least during the days I am in the classroom.