Conferring in the Country... I mean Hubbard

Another day with real live kids and I must say it was another experience that solidified in my mind that- kids are awesome!

I started my time in Hubbard conferring with a little boy named Thomas. There were several writing opportunities for students on that day, but Thomas was writing about his field trip to the zoo. The first thing I noticed about his work was the way he had modified his large illustrations box to be instead several smaller boxes, each showing different animals. I also noticed that his first sentence was nonfiction and giving a fact he learned on his field trip. I started, by asking him to "Tell me what you were thinking with your illustration".  He proceeded to tell me that he saw many animals and wanted to write about each one. "So this is going to be a nonfiction piece?" I asked. "Yes." He replied. He was very sure of himself. I like that in a writer! I mentioned to him that sometimes in nonfiction pieces that authors and illustrators will add labels to the pictures. I suggested that might be something he would want to think about in this piece. (he has them in this picture, but he did not have them at the time of the conference). I also asked what his plans were for the rest of the writing. He told me he wanted to write the facts about each animal. I told him that would be great. I pointed out each animal in his picture and had him say what was most interesting about each. I left him to work and could hardly wait to see what he continued to add to his writing.

By the way... check out his illustration of a giraffe!
I love it!

When I came back to Thomas 10-15 minutes later or so... his writing was completed. Not only did he write a fine piece of nonfiction, but his idea (and of course the desire for praise like the praise I poured out on him in the conference we had) spread like wildfire to other writers in the class. See the piece Thomas finished as well as the way his idea spread to others. This could lead to a series of mini-lessons on writing nonfiction.

The finished piece by Thomas.

The idea Thomas had, as used by his classmates.

The second interesting conference I had was with a shy girl named Lindsey.  I instantly zoomed into Lindsey's picture and asked her about her illustration. See below.

I asked her to describe the picture. I asked specifically about the lines by the monkey's mouth. She said that was to show that they were making sounds. I asked her how she knew to draw it like that and she shrugged. I told her that is how illustrators DRAW sound in their pictures. I then asked her if she had every used word in her pictures before.

 She looked at me blankly. I flipped over her paper and proceeded to draw notes from our conference. I told her that sometimes in pictures you can see people "talking" and that it looked like this.... (see drawing) and that sometimes in pictures you can see people "thinking" and it looked like this (see drawing). 




Then I asked her to show me the part in her story where she wrote about the sounds. She had not done that yet.  I told her that when you use the sounds in your story it is called Onomatopoeia. After the group at the table got done laughing at the "funny word" we had more conversation about what it means and how a writer could use sounds in their story. I helped Lindsey brainstorm the sound the monkeys were making and we thought about how she could spell that. We brainstormed other sounds that could be in a story about the zoo. The sound of the bus horn beeping, the sound of the kids yelling, the sound of the leaves blowing.  Again, this writing conference idea caught on like wildfire.

As I was headed out the door and back on my way to Waco, I had a student call out, "What's it called again when you put sounds in your story?" I love my job!