The pitfalls of conferencing with Struggling Writers

OK, this is why I signed up for this class--how can I better help struggling writers? Circling mistakes in red doesn't work...either the students merely copy the teacher's corrections into their papers, or (more likely) they don't even read them in the first place. I am a big fan of conferencing with students--but reading Glasswell's article opened my eyes to bad practices of which I am guilty.

Most important--interruptions. Because of the resource setting in which I work, I am constantly interrupted by students needing direction, asking for clarification, etc. while I'm conferencing on a writing piece with a student. The weaker the writer, the longer it takes to go through his paper--Glasswell is right, I do tend to take care of small problems with others and then come back to the writer. Now that I am aware of this, I will make it a priority to minimize interruptions and give the writer sustained attention. Interruptions are not as much of a problem in my Coteach English 9 class, as one teacher can concentrate only on conferencing while the other supervises/answers questions for the rest of the class.

Glasswell found that teachers conferencing with struggling writers tended to focus on lower levels such as mechanics, word choice, and punctuation rather than higher levels such as goals of the writing. Once again, I see this as an area where I can definitely improve. I can see that it is important to help the student see his writing as a way of communicating ideas, not just a sequence of sentences which contain mistakes.

Mrs. Marilyn Shelton, who teaches creative writing and 12th/10th grade English at JD, uses a technique where she marks grammatical errors with a red check at the end of the line. That just means that there is some error--the student is responsible for figuring out how to correct the sentence. This is very time consuming for her and for the students, but it forces a student to think about his own revision; the student becomes stronger at spotting and fixing the errors he/she tends to make.

Late for work--I'd save the draft and publish later, but I don't trust that I'll get the post back. Please forgive my "mechanical" error...no time to double proof!

Barb