What You've Been Waiting For

It's Here!!!

If you read my post last week, you know that I have been working with my District Literacy Coach, Kate (aka Debbie Miller, Donalynn Miller and Kathy Collins all rolled into one) to bring you an amazing resource!!!!  Hold on to your seats...I hope you are just as thrilled as I am when you download your FREE sample!

Here is a little background about how these Conferring Shortcuts came about...

During Reading Workshop or the Daily Five when your kiddos are independently reading and you are going around conferencing with them, do you find yourself doing a "drive-by" conference? 

By a drive-by conference, we mean this:

Teacher "How's it going?"

Child "Good."

Teacher "Can you read a little of your book to me?"

Child {reads}

Teacher "Great, keep up the good work."

During this conference, the teacher listened to the child, gave a compliment and went on to the next child.  Where was the TEACHING in that conference?  Maybe the teacher didn't know how to find a teaching point with the child because she has never read the book herself.  Maybe the 4th grade teacher doesn't know how to conference with a lower-level reader because she has never had to deal with a 4th grader who can only read level J books.

If you have a solid conference with a child about his/her reading, a conference should have:

Research (listen and talk to child)

Decide (what are you going to teach)

Teaching Point/Compliment (actually teach something meaningful)

These Conferencing Shortcuts were developed because Kate was watching teachers struggle with what to teach to their readers during a reading conference.  Conferring Shortcuts were designed to be used with series books like Elephant and Piggie, Commander Toad, Minnie and Moo, Henry and Mudge, etc.

Here is the product description straight from TPT:

Conferring Shortcuts

Reading Workshop Conferring Shortcuts are life savers for busy teachers (if you have plenty time . . .this isn't for you). In the research phase of conferences teachers often struggle with what to confer about. Constantly searching for the perfect teaching point is frustrating especially when you haven't read all the books. So . . . for each series, Conferring Shortcuts suggest 4-5 teaching points that will not only work for any book in the series but will also meet the needs of children at that independent level and be generalizable to their entire reading life. Whether you are using a reading workshop approach like Lucy Calkins or Daily Five, these conferring bites will help guide your one on one time with learners. Each bite is a 2" by 4" label (Avery 5163) that can used inside the cover or on the back of a series book and presto . . .you have a teacher guide OR labels can be adhered to index cards and placed in a 3" by 5" binder for teachers to carry with them as part of their conferring tool kit.

Who says you can't cheat in school?

Come on over to my TPT store {HERE} to download the FREE sample and start changing the way you confer with kids.  If you download the sample, don't forget to follow my store so you don't miss any more Conferring Shortcut Series Labels.  Kate has over 50 already made and almost ready to be posted in sets of 10.  Please spread the word to your coworkers and blogging friends about this amazing resource!  If you have any suggestions for more Series Shortcuts, please leave me a comment.