Speaking Up

Reviews / Votes

Conferencing with student writers can empower students to take ownership over their writing, target specific writing goals, and develop practices that will last beyond any given assignment or task. But conferring can be challenging in secondary classrooms, where teachers often work with over 100 students per day. In this book, Matthusen and Abraham offer a long-awaited resource for middle and high school teachers who are committed to holding writing conferences in realistic and sustainable ways. Packed with specific strategies and classroom examples, Conferencing in the Secondary Classroom is a necessary tool for implementing meaningful writing conferences across the school year. -- Christine M. Dawson, PhD, Director of Teacher Preparation Program at Siena College, author of The Teacher-Writer: Creating Writing Groups for Personal and Professional Growth Giving effective feedback is one of the most high-impact moves we can make as a teacher. In the English classroom, writing conferences can serve as the best way to give meaningful feedback that will move and empower our writers. But how to do conferences in the middle or high school classroom, when we see over one hundred students a week, and perhaps have never tried this kind of instructional practice? This book will show you the way. Matthusen and Abraham give specific, practical, and authentic guidance so writing conferences are doable and they make a difference in every writer's growth. The authors are public school teachers who speak from experience. They break down all the steps in creating a strong classroom culture for conferring, getting organized, understanding different kinds of conferences, and trouble-shooting along the way. This book shows us how to increase all writer's skills, confidence, and independence so their writing identities thrive. What could be more important as we send them off to be citizens of the world, their voices ready to be heard by the world? -- Berit Gordon, literacy consultant; author, "No More Fake Reading" and "The Joyful Teacher" Conferencing is an absolute must-make move of guided inquiry and cognitive apprenticeship approaches to teaching and learning, which is the most powerful way to teach if we care about each student actualizing her full potential, to achieving equity, to teaching in culturally and personally responsive ways. In this book, you'll be apprenticed into the use of conferences by two great-hearted teachers speaking from the authority of their expansive experience. They know the pitfalls and the productive struggles. And through it they've developed tools that make conferencing work for teachers and learners. What's in it for you? Empowered teaching and deeper and more joyful learning in a culture of deeply interpersonal engagement. I highly recommend this book as a must-make read! -- Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Distinguished Professor of English Education at Boise State University; Author of "Reading Unbound: Why Kids Need to Read What They Want, and Why We Should Let Them"