What are you thinking

Streaming video - 2014

Have you ever wanted to sit down beside a master teacher and see how he or she confers? In this video, join Patrick Allen, author of Conferring: the keystone to reader's workshop, as he confers with nine different students over the course of two days. Sitting down one-on-one with a student in a conference is the best way to differentiate instruction so all students can learn the comprehension skills and strategies that wise readers use. Patrick demonstrates how to connect with readers, how to monitor their progress through individual records, and, perhaps most important, how to encourage children to love books and reading while honoring their individuality. Let's face it: conferring in reader's workshop is hard work. There is... no script or program that plans for all the ways a conference can be managed. throughout What are you thinking? Patrick provides a strong model for navigating the open-ended possibilities that each reader brings to a reading conference. In the lesson on determining importance in text, we see Patrick model how readers decide what is essential in the text they are reading and then watch as he confers with his students about the decisions they are making while reading. Each of the nine conferences has a different instructional focus, including vocabulary, appropriate text choice, expository text, and reading with a writer's eye. This video will leave you ready to confer with readers in your classroom. About the author: Patrick Allen received his bachelor's degree in communications disorders and his graduate certification in elementary education from the University of Northern Colorado. He received his master's degree in curriculum, instruction, and pedagogy with a mathematics and science emphasis from the University of Colorado at Denver. He is currently a teacher at Frontier Valley Elementary School and a staff developer/lab classroom teacher at the Public Education and Business Coalition. He has over twenty years of teaching experience. more