Conferring with Readers and Writers

Tiny Tale:

How many times have you started a writing workshop, you have the best laid-plans, and they don’t always happen? Your goal is to work with five students, and you end up working with two. When you check-in with Bobbie; he is not holding on to anything you taught last week.  Gracie’s folder has fifteen books on the same topic that she wrote over the course of three days, and you can’t figure out how that happened.

You may be thinking; what the heck is going on?


This winter our building is heading into a new PLC focusing on conferring. We plan to use the Research Decide Teach {RDT} structure; written extensively in Carl Anderson book How Is It Going? 


What is RDT? 

This predictable conference structure often takes less than five minutes. The teacher begins the conference by researching the writer.  Carl Anderson likes to pose the question; “How is it going?”  During this beginning conversation you want to get a snapshot of where a child is at.  Next, think about how this fits into the bigger picture of the child you have come to know as a writer or reader.  Notice and name what the child is doing well, and build on the child’s strengths by starting with a compliment.


Following, it is time to decide and teach the child.  The teaching point should be something that the child can almost do on their own but not quite yet. We often have a  number of teaching directions we could go. It’s important that we only pick one.

Yes, one.

Lastly, make sure you record what you talked about during the conference.  Recently, we read an online article that reminded us that taking notes are the tracks of our teaching and are absolutely essential. This quick record keeping helps us be accountable for what we taught, and helps kids too. It’s powerful to end the conference by telling the child back what you just wrote down.

Here is a conferring sheet we find helpful.

Quick Reflection 

We always confer one-on-one with students during workshop time, but we haven’t necessarily used this structure consistently. We would work with a child ask them how they were doing, and sometimes the conference would turn into a “check-in” . We could try to help a child with something from the mini-lesson and the students would struggle. Instead of spending five minutes with that child, we would end up spending fifteen.


We hope you come along with us on this PLC journey.  We hope to dig deep into RDT with reading and writing workshop. Our 2018 goal is to find ways to grow stronger professionally and share that with you.

Happy almost Thursday!