Conferring is the Pixie Dust: The Power of Two Minutes

To get students reading more--more books, more often, more widely, our English 9 team includes independent reading as a staple in our curriculum. In fact, 20% of my face-to-face time with students--the first fifteen minutes every day--is independent reading.

At the high school level, that lack of teacher-led direct instruction raises some eyebrows, especially if we teachers use that time to model 'the joy of reading' ourselves during that chunk of time. My colleague Marija and I felt a little teacher-guilt last year--an hour over the course of the day to read our own choice books! Sure, we'd monitor for kids off-task and field student questions, but interrupting them to confer while they were genuinely engaged in their books seemed like an intrusion.

We have also set an expectation for two hours weekly of outside-of-class reading. Pernille Ripp and others have opined that reading logs and other assignments teachers send home for kids to prove they're reading can devalue and lessen their enjoyment and motivation to read. And as a parent who's filled in and signed lots of last-minute, thrown-together logs over the years, I know such paperwork isn't always accurate. (And what about the kid who did all the reading but forgets/loses the sheet?) So how do we know?

Conferring.  This year, we've committed to using that first fifteen minutes of reading time to confer with kids. What I've learned already--it's the best way, the most authentic way, to hold students accountable for independent reading, both in and out of class.

After three weeks, I've managed to check in with virtually all of my students (150+) at least once. In several class periods I managed to touch base with five students in one fifteen-minute period, but with student questions, technology snafus, etc., I average closer to three. This tweak in protocol from last year--I did confer with students, but far more erratically or when touching base on particular project--is like sprinkling pixie dust all over Room 239.

What happens during these magic moments? Here are some highlights I scribbled down from this week:

• LK sharing that two narrators in Ellen Hopkins's Tilt haven't met each other yet, but he's "pretty sure they're going to soon, and [he's] really excited for that." 
• KS suggesting her own fix for not reading during study hall: "It gets too loud in there--oh, but I could go to the library." --So, so glad I didn't interrupt her thinking and chime in with that suggestion myself! I'm working on my pause-time in conferences; definitely a 'win' there.
• LG, who struggles to find books she can get into, has almost finished Wake, the first book in a trilogy. She's got the other two already at home, and her mom wants to read the series, too, so she'll be passing Wake on to her mom when she moves to Book #2. "I can't wait for my mom to read it so we can talk about it."  !!!
• JB, who I could easily forget is in my class because he's so quiet (and sits under the chalkboard during independent reading so it seriously took me a minute of hunting for him to find him to confer!), explaining first 57 pages of Enrique's Journey to me. When he said he's been reading outside class and I asked him if it was taking him a long time to get through the pages, he revealed he's reading a different book at home--The Things They Carried.  !!! He'd forgotten to put it on his Books Read list in notebook, so I had no idea. 

The power of conferring. 

In addition to these four WOWs, I've had countless one-on-ones about expectations of outside-of-class reading, library search tools, possible next reads and fix-ups of comprehension errors in their novels. Were I standing in the front of the class or modeling reading engrossed in a book myself, these minor things could become major barriers to success down the road for some of my students in terms of engagement, motivation, and/or grades. Another plus: my memory is better at recalling who's reading what and how it's going.

Subtly, too, I think my presence among the class during reading time naturally promotes on-task behavior. They expect to see me to be walking around their pods, stopping randomly to chat, so they're not distracted by me and not caught off guard when I drop beside them and ask them about their book. It's also pretty cool that kids overhear other students' enthusiasm about their books and my excitement for reading. 

Of course, not every student has bought into independent reading. A handful aren't using their time productively, yet. A few still grab the same book from the shelf at the start of class every day and put it back after fifteen minutes. I also have several students who genuinely struggle with verbalizing their thoughts to me, even informally. But because of conferring EVERY DAY, I know these things early; and because of the pixie dust, because of the countless productive, brief conversations I'm having with the overwhelming majority of my students, I'm energized to keep patiently, positively waving that wand of reading magic at those who resist. 

A little shift in what I'm doing during reading time, but a huge payoff for kids. And for me.