One to One: The Art of Conferring with Young Writers

In an effective writing workshop, young children grow in leaps and bounds, and within just a few months, the changes in their written products can dazzle you. And after 30 years of studying her students' growth in the writing workshop, Lucy Calkins knows one of the most powerful ways to support good writers: clear, purposeful writing conferences.

In One to One Calkins and her colleagues Amanda Hartman and Zoe White show you the practices and principles that create effective conferences. They dispel the myth that master teachers have a magic touch and show you that effective teachers do not reinvent the conference with each student, but rather use predictable, principled interactions that follow a few simple frameworks. In One to One, you will learn:

• repeatable conferring frameworks that are the foundation of effective conferring
• specific teaching methods that you can match to your students' needs
• strategies for tailoring conferences to English language learners
• ways to use conferring across the content areas
• on-the-run record-keeping systems that are efficient, powerful teaching tools.

Good conferring, like good teaching, relies on your ability to communicate effectively with children, and the skills you develop as you learn to confer will improve your teaching abilities in all areas, including developing curriculum, leading strong minilessons, and untangling the classroom chaos that can derail a smoothly running workshop. Read One to One to improve your conferences and your teaching. But most important, read it to improve your students' writing every day.

Author: Lucy Calkins, Amanda Hartman, Zoe Ryder White
Publisher: Heinemann Educational Books
Published: 01/13/2005
Pages: 232
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.89lbs
Size: 9.18h x 7.38w x 0.45d
ISBN: 9780325007885

About the Author

Lucy Calkins is the Founding Director of the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project at Columbia University. For more than thirty years, she has led the Project in its dual functions as a think tank, developing state-of-the-art teaching methods, and a provider of professional development, supporting hundreds of thousands of teachers, principals, superintendents, and policy-makers across the country and around the world. Lucy is the author or coauthor - and series editor - of the reading, writing, and phonics Units of Study series, which are integral to classroom life in tens of thousands of schools around the world. In addition, she has authored scores of professional books and articles. Lucy is also the Robinson Professor of Children's Literature at Teachers College, Columbia University, where she co-directs the Literacy Specialist Program. Visit UnitsofStudy.com Order Resources by Lucy Calkins

Amanda Hartman, Deputy Director for Primary Literacy at the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project at Columbia University, heads up TCRWP's K - 2 reading, writing, and coaching institutes, and presents at conferences around the world. Amanda is the author or coauthor of books in the Units of Study for Teaching Reading series, the Units of Study in Opinion, Information, and Narrative Writing series, and the Units of Study in Phonics series. She has also authored the video, Up Close: Teaching English Language Learners in Writing Workshops and is the coauthor of One-to-One: The Art of Conferring with Young Writers (all published by Heinemann).

Zo^De Ryder White is the author of the Heinemann title Playing with Poems (2008) and a is a coauthor of One to One: The Art of Conferring with Young Writers, as well as a coauthor of Units of Study for Primary Writing, classroom materials from Heinemann firsthand. She is a kindergarten teacher at PS321 in Brooklyn, New York. Before life as a classroom teacher, Zo^De worked as a writer-in-residence through the Teachers and Writers Collaborative in nearly 25 public schools throughout New York City.