Before implementing my action research, teaching writing was challenging to me as I struggled to know my students as writers and to meet all of their individual needs. During independent writing time, I met with students to discuss their writing but only gave them ideas on how to fix that particular piece. I did not record any information from the conference in order to keep the students accountable, and my students did not keep track of their personal writing goals to keep themselves accountable. Also, I did not have a consistent structure and flow for each writing conference; therefore, my students did not know what to expect each time.
As a result of my action research, I learned how to be an effective and strong writing teacher, specifically during independent writing time by using the following research based strategies.
First, I kept myself accountable for writing conferences by scheduling them with students. At the beginning, I scheduled too many for one writing block. I had to find a happy-medium that allowed me to keep my conferences short, which was key to writing conferences as mentioned numerous times in my literature review, but also provided each student with enough time to have a meaningful conversation about their writing. Personally, I tend to spend more time than necessary with individual students; therefore, this was a challenge at the beginning.
Another key element of writing conferences as noted by my research, was to follow a consistent structure, which included the conference environment. Research showed a distinct structure to be successful; therefore, this was the structure I followed for my action research. By following this structure each conference, conferences were more effective as they were consistent and the student knew what to expect. Due to this, the student was able to focus on their writing instead of the next question I would ask. As noted on my action plan, I did a mini lesson to inform and prepare students for their first conference.
Finally, tracking and recording data was definitely the greatest change made in my classroom. Prior to research, I was not consistent with recording information during conferences. Some weeks I would write the conversation down, and other times I would just go and talk with students about their writing. When this happened, I would forget what we talked about the previous conference. Without recording the conversation, I was unable to be intentional with my conversation and was unable to know if my students were improving. After implementing a record keeping system, I could see when my students made growth and if they were taking my feedback and implementing it into their writing.
Overall, I grew as a writing teacher, and I was better able to individualize and differentiate my writing instruction that I did not do before my action research. Many of the items discussed above I will be implementing in my classroom next year. At the beginning of the year, I will do a mini lesson with my students about writing conferences. I will also be scheduling conferences with three to four students each day; therefore, I show my students that their writing is a priority in my classroom. Following the research-based structure and flow of conferences, as discussed above, is a definite must for me as a writing teacher in following years.
Out of all the strategies I added within teacher-student writing conferences would be teacher and student record keeping. I plan to take data every conference I have with my students, and my students will keep track of all of their writing goals. Not only does this help me as a writing teacher, but it also helps my students see their growth from the beginning to the end of the year.
To assist students in reflecting about their writing, I created a reflection guide that outlined key points from the district rubric. This helped my students be better exposed to what I would be scoring them on as well as guided their reflection. Especially at the beginning, my students were unable to decide what they could be better at. It relates to the age-old saying, “You don’t know what you don’t know.” Next year, I plan to have a ‘changes’ section in the students’ writing notebooks. During my research, in order to collect formative data, I had my students use the skill or technique we discussed during their conference and rewrite one paragraph or section of their piece. I then scored their changes. After reflecting, I concluded that this gave students the opportunity to practice their writing goal before incorporating it into their next writing piece. Therefore, my way to simply collect data evolved into an element I will use next year.