Conferring with Readers: Supporting Each Student's Growth and Independence » (1st Edition)

Gravity Goldberg is coauthor of the Heinemann title Conferring with Readers (2007). She is a full-time staff developer at the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project at Columbia University, where she consults with principals, coaches, and teachers in New York City and throughout the country. Gravity was a special educator and third-grade teacher in Boston and is currently a doctoral candidate at Teachers College, Columbia University, where she is also a part-time instructor in the preservice early childhood education department.

Jennifer Serravallo is the author and coauthor of the Heinemann titles Teaching Reading in Small Groups and Conferring with Readers. Jen came to New York City after graduating from Vassar College to develop her passion for urban education reform. While working toward her MA at Teachers College, Columbia University, she taught grades 3-5 in two Title I schools with swelling class sizes, high numbers of ELLs, and an enormous range of learners. For the past six years she's been a full-time staff developer and a national consultant with the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project, where she helps urban, suburban, and rural schools implement exceptional literacy instruction through reading and writing workshop. What she shares in Teaching Reading in Small Groups comes from the work in her classroom and from the classrooms where she consults.

A great reading conference only takes five minutes, but its impact can last a lifetime. That's because conferences are the critical, one-to-one teaching that forms the backbone of reading instruction. Conferring with Readers shows you how to confer well and demonstrates why a few moments with students every week can put them on the path to becoming better, more independent readers.

Conferring with Readers is a comprehensive guide that shows you how to determine what readers have learned and what they need to practice, then provides suggestions for targeting instruction to meet students' needs. It provides explicit teaching methods for use in effective conferences. You'll learn how to:

• research a student's use of skills through questions and observations
• compliment to support and build upon successes
• follow up on prior instruction for accountability and depth of understanding
• explain a reading strategy by providing an explicit purpose and context
• model the strategy to make the invisible brainwork of reading more visible
• guide a readerinpracticing the strategy
• link the strategy to independent reading.

Conferring with Readers presents repeatable frameworks for conferences that focus on six specific purposes of reading instruction:

• matching students to just-right books
• reinforcing students' strengths
• supporting students during whole-class studies
• helping students move from one reading level to the next
• holding students accountable for previous learning
• deepening students' conversations about books in order to deepen their thinking.

What's more, each purpose is bolstered by an appendix of conference transcripts that support your teaching.

With all this plus ideas for planning instruction, keeping records of your conferences, and even conducting group sessions, Conferring with Readers will make a big difference in how you teach reading-helping you feel confident and well equipped to foster each student's growth and independence as a reader.